Notes of a Crocodile
Ratings11
Average rating3.4
"Set in the post-martial-law era of 1990s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile depicts the coming-of-age of a group of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan's most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, Qiu Miaojin's cult classic novel is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and countercultural icon. Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman who is alternately hot and cold toward her, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes the devil-may-care, rich-kid-turned-criminal Meng Sheng and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover Chu Kuang, as well as the bored, mischievous overachiever Tun Tun and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend Zhi Rou. Bursting with the optimism of newfound liberation and romantic idealism despite corroding innocence, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant and intimate masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature"--
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Formatted as a series of journal entries across eight notebooks, Notes of A Crocodile follows an unnamed lesbian university student as she struggles with forming and maintaining relationships with others while she goes to school in Taipei, Taiwan. Alongside these entries about her friendships and love life are sections about the country's obsession with crocodiles—elusive creatures that wear human suits to blend in. Though I'm still unclear on what exactly crocodiles are meant to represent, it's clear they are related to the experiences of queer people in 1987 Taiwan.
Miaojin's prose is an interesting combination of straightforward and poetic, and rather beautifully captures the confusion, heartache, and drama of the college years. This is a book I'd love to read again, as I'm sure I've missed much of the nuance in the dialogue and setting.
I wouldn't recommend this book to everyone, but I enjoyed reading it and learned more about what it's been like for young people to be queer around the world. I think having a deeper understanding of the state of Taipei in the late ‘80s would be beneficial in reaching a better understanding of this novel.
