Elsewhere: 'Wonderful writing' Sarah Hall

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Yeah, definitely. I suppose we have a word for it now: micro-aggression. When people are shouting ‘ni hao’ to me, it’s a way of flagging you out as an alien,” Ge says. And what do we say when many years later people ask us about the big earthquake in 2008★” Vertical said. The more marginalised we are from the centre the less we are allowed to talk, write and think as ourselves… You're always seen, by others and by yourself, as a woman, a foreigner, an outsider, therefore the subordinate, the inferior and the inauthentic. Ignore these old drunks,” Small Bamboo said apologetically. “You go sit with Vertical.” He pointed me to a table on the side, at which a young woman and two men in their twenties sat. They waved at me gleefully. Six Times downed his beer. “Think about it this way,” he said, “when you write a story, you’re essentially creating a dish. You want people to see the meat and the veg and even to smell the fragrances. But they can’t actually eat it. They can only imagine the taste of the food by interpreting the image of it.”

Magical realism of the best kind, where the spectacular is paired with just enough irony and daffy humor to keep it grounded on earth—or whichever world this fun and beguiling book takes place.” You prawns!” Young Li puffed out a mouthful of smoke. “Can we talk about something else★ Haven’t we had enough of dead people★” The book is a collection of stories, covering various topics and eras. The connecting thread can perhaps be summarised as loneliness and dejection, especially that experienced by people crossing between cultures (as, presumably, the author herself had). We walked to the Little House. The buses hadn’t been running since the twelfth and there were no taxis. Small Bamboo had smoked three cigarettes by the time he finally remembered to offer me one. I told him I didn’t smoke.That’s Young Li’s,” Small Bamboo said. “One big living room and three bedrooms for him, his wife, and two kids. There’s even a kitchen inside. God knows where that prawn got it from!” I was a little more impressed with ‘Free Wandering’ and ‘How I Fell in Love with the Well-Documented Life of Alex Wheelan’ in that I appreciated what both were trying to do a lot more. ‘Free Wandering’ had some clarity issues, but was a much more interesting story and the strange, distant characters went well with Yan Ge’s sparse and slightly odd style. ‘[…] Alex Wheelan’ was an interesting idea but was a tough one to execute, given its thoroughly modern subject matter, and it veered a little too much into the cringe for it to be entirely successful for me. the stories are bold and experimental. It achieves a perfect balance of western and eastern culture, mixing the two perfectly.

This would be a thought-provoking read between gore, quirky and creative activity. I am still in the midst of digesting and I think the book deserves a revisit in the future. Second time might give me different perspectives and understanding. I set out trying to write a story collection that was connected or has a strong theme – and I just gave up!” Her agent suggested she follow her own path instead. “I really allowed myself to try out different voices. But I feel the reason I was trying them out was that these voices were in me already. I see this collection, from a personal point of view, like a journey of me finding out what kind of writer I want to be in English.” The women there have strong and slender fingers. The perfect kind of fingers for plunging into the goose’s asshole and yanking out the entrails while it’s still alive. They do it with precision and determination. They do this in a flash to preserve its tenderness.” This collection, to be published on July 11th, 2023 tells different stories, in different voices, with a common thread of ‘otherness’ throughout each piece. While the title of the collection is “Elsewhere”, the feeling of being outside looking in on characters who are outside of their community, their time and place, and even themselves is a consistent theme. Each story was driven from one specific perspective, and that character moved through their own story like they didn’t quite fit. This off-balance characterization left me feeling off balanced as well. In conclusion, Yan Ge’s English debut novel, “Elsewhere,” stands as a testament to her exceptional talent as a writer. With its visceral storytelling and profound exploration of identity and displacement, the novel captivates readers from start to finish. Ge’s unique perspective, born out of her experiences growing up in Chengdu, China, adds depth and authenticity to the narrative, creating a rich cultural tapestry that seamlessly blends tradition and modernity.The sixth, "No Time To Write", is a story of an Irish woman who grew up, among other places, in Shanghai, and has had a complicated relationship with her parents and herself. Lots of self pity and victimhood here. The whole story feels like a rant by an infantile young adult.

The cosmopolitan nature of “Elsewhere” adds richness and depth to the narratives. The stories take place in various time periods and locations, such as New York City and Chiang Mai, showcasing Yan Ge’s ability to navigate different cultural contexts. This diversity allows readers to explore a range of perspectives and experiences, immersing themselves in the intricacies of different cultures. I think comedy is about tension – about building up tension, then releasing it or not releasing it. The first story, "A Little House", is about a group of Chinese 20 somethings (probably?), who interact and live in the aftermath of the 2008 earthquake in China. Not super clear what happened, or what the point of the story is. A heady mix of despondence (from the narrator) and blasé attitude (from many of her friends). A story, perhaps, of what modern 20-somethings in China think and feel, and how absolutely the same it is as anywhere else in the world.

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But I had this conversation with him a lot and I feel it’s never the same – [in China] they think you’re doing some cultural tourist thing. I think the context is different when you’re a person of colour in a white-dominated society. When I was in Ireland, I would be asked, oh is your husband Irish? You know, what makes you legit here?” Let me, first and foremost, gather my thoughts because it has been so long since I read an eclectic and multifaceted pieces of writing. Precise, surreal and emotionally devastating —the stories in Elsewhere leap between continents and centuries with a fierceness and confidence that makes their abiding loneliness and sense of longing all the more affecting." —Lucy Caldwell, author of These Days The English-language debut from celebrated author Yan Ge is a genre-bending short story collection that’s as haunting, dreamlike, and addictive as a melatonin-induced slumber." — Nylon Yep.” Small Bamboo nodded. “This prawn could have been sitting in an office in the central government now if he hadn’t got the wrong girlfriend and joined the protest with her at the wrong time.”

This subtle but brilliant collection will draw readers in and keep them enchanted until the very last word." — Booklist But none of these matter to us,” Six Times continued. “When poets come into the room we simply chomp on the fictional dish you’ve created. We eat up the food and shit it out later. And the shit is poetry.” When Travelling in the Summer’ was the first of the stories I really liked. It had a good premise and an interesting cast of characters that all related to each other in interesting ways. Not only this, but it came to a satisfying but not overwrought conclusion. It was definitely more of a traditional story structurally than the others, and I think this is also why it stood out to me. It knew what it wanted to do, then executed it well. My favourite of the collection was definitely the final story, ‘Hai’. Really, for the same reasons as for above, but doubly so. Everything ‘When Travelling in the Summer’ did well, ‘Hai’ did even better, and spent more time doing it. The writing here was also the best of among all the stories (and it had been very good throughout), with some fantastic dialogue especially. I’ll be honest, if Yan Ge hadn’t put out this as a collection of short stories, but had instead put this out as a novella alone, I would have been just as happy. I don’t know if that’s the best approach. But it’s certainly my approach. And I’m also not trying to tell the readers how to feel.” Strange Beasts of China feels like a riddle and a parable and a dream, the kind of book you want to get lost in.”

In this Spotlight:

Only the similarities that I could find throughout and crossing all the stories are the themes which champion art and literature specifically in writing as most of the characters were authors, writers and poets, and they also discussed certain book titles and poems; discuss displacement and self-identities as the characters all discussed their dispositions and individualities; as well as the position of language in determining one’s true meaning and deliverance.