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Fang Si-Chi's First Love Paradise

A Novel

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

"A harrowing portrait of sexual violence and its thunderous reverberations. Through Jenna Tang's incisive translation, the reader is brought along a heartbreaking and unflinching journey."—Crystal Hana Kim, author of If You Leave Me

?The most influential book of Taiwan's #MeToo movement—a heartbreaking account of sexual violence and a remarkable reinvention of the trauma plot, turning the traditional Lolita narrative upside down as it explores women's vulnerability, victimization, and the lengths they will go to survive.

Thirteen-year-old Fang Si-Chi lives with her family in an upscale apartment complex in Taiwan, a tightknit community of strict yet doting parents and privileged children raised to be ambitious, dutiful, and virtuous. She and her neighbor Liu Yi-Ting bond over their love of learning and books, devouring classic works—Proust, Gabriel García Márquez, the very best Chinese writers. Yet, it is their lack of real-world education that makes them true kindred spirits.

Si-Chi's innocence is irresistible to Lee Guo-hua, a revered cram literature teacher and serial predator who lives in her building. When he offers to tutor the academic-minded girls for free, their parents—unaware of Lee's true nature—happily accept. While Yi-Ting's studies with Lee are straightforward, Si-Chi learns about things no one teaches them in school—lessons about sex and love that will change the course of her life. Confused and uncertain, Si-Chi turns to her beloved books for guidance. But literature tells her nothing honest about rape or how to cope with the trauma of abuse. For her own salvation, the young girl begins to think of her personal hell as her "first love paradise," where the power of love, no matter how twisted, gives her the strength to survive.

One of the biggest books to come out of Taiwan in the last decade, Fang Si-Chi's First Love Paradise is a chilling tale of grooming and its lingering trauma, and the power structures that allow it to flourish. Insightful, unsettling, emotionally raw, it is a staggering work of literature that reverberates across cultures and forces us to confront painful truths about the vulnerability and strength of women and those who use and hurt them.

Translated from the Chinese by Jenna Tang

Sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Republic of China (Taiwan)

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    • Booklist

      April 15, 2024
      Lin Yi-Han reckons with the loss of innocence, abuse of power, and the legacy of trauma in her exceptional, award-winning debut. Preteens Liu Yi-Ting and Fang Si-Chi are "twin spirits," sharing a love of literature and a tendency to romanticize the lives of adults in their apartment building, including the respected cram school teacher, Lee Guo-Hua. Years later, when Si-Chi is institutionalized after a mental breakdown, Yi-Ting discovers that Teacher Lee, a serial predator, raped her friend at the age of 13, then subjected her to six years of further abuse. Si-Chi kept a diary about her devastating experience, deciding that the only way she could psychologically withstand Teacher Lee's attacks was to believe she was in love with him: "Your lover can do anything to you, right?" Lin's striking prose evokes the visceral horror of Si-Chi's situation, the monstrous capacity of men who inflict violence upon women and girls, and the power structures that protect them. Her unflinching determination to write about "a group of girls . . . who had really lost it all" led to this powerful, haunting novel, adeptly translated by Tang after Lin's early death by suicide. The conversations sparked by the book and Lin's death influenced the #MeToo movement in Taiwan and led to legislative change. A tour de force.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Kirkus

      April 15, 2024
      "It turned out that most people lacked imagination for other people's suffering." The corrosive, hidden effects of sexual violence are illustrated in this haunting account of the experiences of women and girls in contemporary Taiwan. Young adolescents and inseparable friends, Lui Yi-Ting and Fang Si-Chi, share a love of literature and head off together to live in Taipei to attend a competitive high school. There, Si-Chi reveals that she is the "girlfriend" of their middle-aged tutor, neighbor, and cram-school instructor, Teacher Lee. Despite Yi-Ting's objections, Si-Chi continues her relationship with the reptilian teacher (unaware that she is just one in a line of girls the predator has groomed and seduced). Unable to disclose the nature of the troubling relationship to others, Si-Chi convinces herself that Teacher Lee is her first love, though the coercion, secrecy, and sexual violence begin to manifest themselves in troubling memory lapses. As Si-Chi begins a descent into an all-consuming mental illness, she maintains a friendship with a slightly older married woman from the apartment building that was her childhood home. Hsu Iwen, who gave up doctoral studies in literature upon her marriage, had been a companion and source of encouragement to the girls during their earlier school years. Despite her suspicions, Iwen--herself abused and beaten--is not able to convince Si-Chi to reveal her troubling truth. The selective blindness surrounding Si-Chi's situation is echoed in the abysmal treatment of one of Teacher Lee's previous victims, who launches a campaign to expose him online. Tang, who lyrically translated Lin's only novel after the 26-year-old author died by suicide in 2017, credits the author with changing the voice of the #MeToo movement in Taiwan. A harrowing account of a personal hell.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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