‘Taipei Story’ by R. F. Kuang

I really enjoyed Yellowface when I read it last year, so I was looking forward to Kuang’s next novel. The premise follows Lily as she travels to Taipei for a summer language programme, hoping to reconnect with her cultural heritage and improve her Chinese.

Despite its title, there isn’t much of a story in the traditional sense. Split into parts rather than chapters (I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself), the book is made up largely of anecdotes, which admittedly made it easy enough to pick up, put down and return to. Unfortunately, most of these anecdotes revolve around the intricacies of language, which I found mildly interesting to begin with, but increasingly repetitive as the book progressed.

A novel more concerned with the complexities of language than the emotional journey of its protagonist.

The brief glimpses we get of Lily’s encounters with friends, classmates and potential love interests were far more interesting to me. These moments offered something beyond the linguistic observations and made me wish Kuang had spent more time exploring Lily’s relationships and experiences in Taipei.

Ultimately, this wasn’t what I expected. I had anticipated a warm, captivating story about a young woman rediscovering herself through her heritage, but instead found a novel more concerned with the complexities of language than the emotional journey of its protagonist. I appreciated the sentiment behind Lily discovering new depths to a language she believed she had a basic understanding of, but it simply wasn’t captivating enough to sustain my interest.

That said, I do enjoy Kuang’s writing, and I suspect I would have switched off much sooner had this been written by somebody else. There’s something engaging about her prose, even when the subject matter isn’t particularly engaging itself.

I went into Taipei Story expecting a story about a young woman finding herself through her heritage. Instead, I found one about a young woman getting lost in semantics.