The South by Tash Aw

Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025--San Antoniio

The South by Tash Aw has been longisted for the Booker Prize this year and is set in southern Malaysia during a summer.  Although the reviews talk about it as the story of two young boys gradually finding themselves attracted to each other and eventually establishing a sexual relationship between them, the book is really so much more than that.  It is the story of a family--an official one by law and an extralegal extension of it.  Within the legal family, the passage of time has been eating away at happiness.  The male professor is resentful for having been passed over multiple times for promotion and is argumentative with students who are complaining to the administration.  His wife, who is 15 years younger than he is and who was once his student is unhappy with her life in regards to a number of awarenesses--that she feels distant with her children, that she feels betrayed by her husband who has been having a long-distance affair with another woman for years and may have another child with that woman, that she gave up her plans for her own life to build this one.  And their story is somewhat a mirror of the husband's father's life who has just died and who also had an extra-marital relationship that resulted in a child.  There are secrets and "secrets"--things that are being kept from almost everyone and things that no one talks about but which everyone seems to know.  The family is spending a summer at an old farm which is failing due to a long-term drought and mismanagement--a farm that the husband's father left to his legitimate son's wife when he recently died.  It's also a farm that has been managed by the man who is the illegitimate son of the deceased father and, therefore the half-brother of the new owner's husband.  The two boys who are falling in love are the children of these two half-brothers.  The man's wife seems to feel closer to the half-brother who is not her husband.  And no one knows that her husband, the professor, was fired just before they left for this vacation.  It's not just the farm that seems to be dying.  All the relationships between the members of these families (including the budding one between the two boys) seem to be beginning an unraveling process with little hope for the future and a great likelihood of lots of depression ahead.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.