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Sightseeing
by Rattawut Lapcharoensap


8.5

based on 15 reviews
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based on 2 votes
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Official Publisher Site

The English-language short stories in this collection (the first for the 26-year-old writer) are set in contemporary Thailand.

Grove Press, 208 pages
01/09/2005
$22.00

ISBN: 0802117880

Fiction
Short Stories

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Kirkus Reviews

Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer... A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.

Publishers Weekly

Anger, humor and longing are neatly balanced in these richly nuanced, sharply revelatory tales.

Salon Priya Jain

It's the distance between that outsider's paradise and the native's often grim reality that Lapcharoensap shows us in his tales, so tenderly crafted and beautifully realized that they'll snuggle up behind your heart and stay there for a long time.

Los Angeles Times Mark Rozzo

It's a stirring coming-of-age fable, brimming, like most of Sightseeing, with sharp-clawed survival lessons. [9 Jan 2005, p.R10]

Washington Post Carole Burns

[A] remarkable debut collection... Lapcharoensap's writing is both elegant and vivid. When occasionally his stories seem too perfectly sculpted, I wonder if the problem is reading too many at once. When I come back to them, their characters and images again seem alive.

The Guardian William Sutcliffe

Every story in this collection is dense with event, emotion and meaning. This debut shows more than mere promise: it is a fine achievement in its own right.

The Independent Aamer Hussein

Lapcharoensap's prose is sensitive to sound and smell; his episodic, cinematic technique often hinges on the slightest of anecdotes.

Wall Street Journal Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg

In this accomplished debut collection of short stories, Mr. Lapcharoensap displays a wicked command of language and an unerring sense of place.

Houston Chronicle Fritz Lanham

A youthful linguistic high-spiritedness enlivens the page. The prose is snappy, colloquial, occasionally profane, often funny.

San Francisco Chronicle Carolyn Juris

That Lapcharoensap, still in his 20s, can convey with such honesty the longings of this older man; indeed, of all of his characters, conveys both his emotional maturity and his burgeoning potential.

Library Journal Shirley N. Quan

Though the stories describe a culture that will be foreign to most readers, they contain themes that touch on the human spirit. [15 Oct 2004, p.58]

Entertainment Weekly

But his portraits of Americans here never go beyond unflattering cliché. Lapcharoensap's Americans aren't just fat: They're hopelessly broad.

The New York Times Book Review Darin Strauss

When he's really going strong, Lapcharoensap is a commanding, animated tour guide, and a lot more than that -- he can write with the bait and the hook of genuine talent. At his weakest, however, he leans on exotic atmosphere and little else.

The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Ray Robertson

Sightseeing occasionally suffers from that most common of creative writing workshop maladies: epiphanitis, the tendency of one's short stories to habitually conclude in breathless moments of overpowering insight. Even rhythmically, they tend to resemble one another.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

But Sightseeing, time and again, manages to turn such swirling contradictions into tidy coming-of-age truisms, politely resisting the free fall of deeper desires and resentments. What's more, the symbolic East-West collisions are often clumsy: One character's first taste of a fast-food burger causes him to throw up.

The average user rating for this book is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Richard J gave it a10:
I think I know Jon H. He's a standup guy, but his critical faculties are suspect. And since we're taking sides with published reviews here, I'll side with the Washington Post. She's right on. The truth is, this book is a big breath of fresh air. Some of these stories--especially their beginnings and endings--will make fiction lovers swoon. (p.s. it's not perfect--really I'd give it more of a 9.5--but you get the drift.)

Jon H gave it a7:
Of the reviews here I tend to agree with The Globe and Mail, all the stories resemble one another, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the book itself. He's author I'll watch in the future.

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Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap

Sightseeing
by Rattawut Lapcharoensap