A review by cinnamonandpancakes
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

challenging emotional reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I read this book extremely fast, I was hooked from the very beginning. Having it formatted as a screenplay seems like a gimmick at first but I found it to actually be a really clever way of creating this sense of the narrator's emotional distance from the people in his life and lent a feeling of unreality to everything.

This book doesn't hold its punches, or refrain from sliding a stiletto between your ribs, but it's so well done that you can't help admiring the skill involved.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Racism, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Death, Death of parent, Classism, Racial slurs, Hate crime, and Violence

Part of the book deals with the early Kuomintang era of Taiwan and the violence that took place then. There is also significant reference to the particular ways the US has tried to exclude Asians from immigrating or becoming citizens.