The Thailand of Westerners' dreams shares space with a Thailand plagued by social and economic inequality in this auspicious debut collection of seven plaintive and luminous stories. In the title tale—an exquisite meditation on human dependency—a son and his ailing mother must accept the dismal reality of her encroaching blindness and what it means for his plans to attend college away from home. In "Don't Let Me Die in This Place," the most exuberant of the stories, an ornery and uproarious widowed grandfather, recently crippled by a stroke, moves from Maryland to Bangkok to live with his son, Thai daughter-in-law and their two "mongrel children." "Farangs" and "At the Café Lovely" convincingly examine adolescent friendship and love, as does "Priscilla the Cambodian"—though when a refugee camp is torched by native Thai xenophobes, it veers toward the politically dark and ominous. Politics and fear also play a role in "Draft Day," a painfully grim story about two young male friends, one of whom avoids military conscription because of his privileged background, and "Cockfighter," the final and longest of the pieces, in which a berserk local thug rules a town through violence and corruption. Young or old, male or female, all of Lapcharoensap's spirited narrators are engaging and credible. Anger, humor and longing are neatly balanced in these richly nuanced, sharply revelatory tales.

Nice fast read. Interesting stories set in Thailand. Not so much for the tourist but a local look into the people. The cock fighting story stuck with me the most.

Book is traveling to the UK...

Arrived today - thank you so much for this =)

I really, really enjoyed this book. To be honest, if I’d picked it up myself I would probably be keeping it now!! But I won’t – haven’t quite decided how I’ll pass it on yet, but I will think of something.

This was a great collection of short stories set in modern Thailand. It’s interesting to get the insight from a local perspective rather than the popular tourist point of view. Thailand seems to be the place to go that it ends up being all we associate it with: backpackers – and we forget that there’s a culture and people living their everyday lives there. I’ve never been to Thailand (as yet anyway) incidentally, but I think it was an interesting way of getting into real life modern Thailand.

As with all short story collections, I enjoyed some more than others – but they are all good. I liked Farangs (now does this mean foreigner or tourist?) – and the pig, Clint Eastwood in there; great stuff. Priscilla the Cambodian was a great story. To be honest, my favourite was actually Cockfighter – doesn’t sound like a subject I would have enjoyed reading about. I am not pro bloodspots, but I did find the father a sympathetic character in this story. And what about the ending??? I want to know more – what happened to Ladda after that? And what did her parents think? And what about the boy from the Phillipines? So frustrating because I want to know more.

RELEASE NOTES:

Going to Castle Museum tomorrow as we've just realised that it's free with our library cards - marvellous! I shall try to leave this somewhere in the museum, and I hope someone picks it up - it is a little gem!

Update: I left it on the seats by the old wedding dresses display.