Elena Koshy
SHEEP. Bald man. A lost friend.
Strangely enough, they make the premise of an incredible story crafted by San Francisco-based Malaysian Yeng Tan. Mister Yam, a Malaysian man mired deep within the corporate cogwheel somewhere in San Francisco, goes on a mind-bending trip after receiving a phone call from a stranger and an invitation to a musical show.
An adventure-thriller, you might think? Well, not quite. Remember the sheep? There's plenty of that animal showing up throughout the book to put that initial guess to rest. But let's digress a little before going through the book.
Can you please review this book? I was asked not too long ago. As writer and occasional reviewer of books, I am frequently besieged with requests by authors wanting certain books to be reviewed, and holding any new book by a hopeful writer gives me a sense of gravity I can't quite dispel.
How do I encourage a writer while attempting to dissect through a story, wrestle with the plot and finally giving my honest opinion? Somebody writes a book and they put all this time and energy and effort to do it, and you'd want to be knowledgeable enough, sensitive enough and critical enough to approach the book in the right way.
Whether they come via email, from social media or in the corner of a holiday cocktail party, there is one prevailing question that arise from both readers and authors. Am I an objective reviewer? Well no. That's the honest truth, actually. There isn't really any such thing as an objective book review, only an honest book review.
Book criticism is an inherently subjective enterprise. Every reader reads a book in a different way. You can read 10 reviews of a book and find that your own response differs from all of them.
And perhaps that's the beauty and inherent attraction of this very strange and whimsical narrative that takes the reader through a bizarre journey that's both riveting and a little hard to understand at the same time.
A WILD RIDE
Don't be fooled by the rather pedestrian summary at the back of the book. Like I said before, it's not quite the typical action-adventure story you might have been expecting. There are no secret spies, villains or even an explosive ending you might expect of a thriller.
"How do you know if something is real?" Lorenzo asks his friend Mister Yam at the beginning of the book. Not long after, Yam receives a strange box from a bald man, sits through a musical about the strange dual life of a half-man/half-sheep named Boris, and receives several strange phone calls from an unknown woman who seems to know all about him.
Promising.
"Do you know why you're here?" asks a stranger to Mister Yam at the strange musical of Boris. "I can't say I do," he replies. "Very well. Let me tell you why you are here then — you know something. Something that you can't necessarily articulate, but that you can feel; you have felt it your entire life. This inexpressible, inexplicable feeling that cannot be understood."
Divided into three parts, the story begins with the bald man, Boris, the strange box, inexplicable phone calls and of course, the missing Lorenzo. Yam takes the box he receives from the bald man to the local pawn shop to see if they could make any headway in unlocking the box or at least finding out its history. The pawn shop proprietor Emma uncovers map coordinates from her research, and Yam gets the idea to follow the coordinates because he believes that Lorenzo's disappearance has something to do with his own recent strange adventures.
Part two moves on to Yam's journey to Montana, where he inexplicably runs into Emma again. Emma then recounts her own experience with the bald man and her escape from her religious family and life back in her hometown of Idaho. After spending a night with her, Yam continues with his journey to Montana. Inexplicably and despite the fact that the strange bald man is somewhat tied to both Yam and Emma, the duo do not appear to find that coincidence particularly important.
Part three is where Yam is finally led to discovering Lorenzo's fate with the help of a hotel receptionist, who for some reason, decides that this young Malaysian fella is worth giving up her time and effort, and worth traipsing through the cold, blistering winter in search of answers that has nothing to do with her.
Philosophical musings abound in Yeng Tan's book. They can be both thought-provoking and interesting, but it eventually gets a little harder to wade through the long, meandering thoughts that threaten to derail the reader from the actual story.
The plot is undoubtedly interesting — creative even — but Yeng Tan's protracted method of writing can be distracting. And then there are those strange word choices that doesn't quite add up. What does he mean when he says "…that the man was somewhat 'brandished' looking"? There are also those strange philosophies and thoughts that got me scratching my head and wondering if Yeng Tan was on a trip himself. The kind that requires a bong, that is.
Don't get me wrong, there is still that glimmer of brilliance that makes this book highly readable despite the shortcomings. I would say that given time, Yeng Tan can eventually come up with an epic novel that might just be mind-blowing (without the use of said bong). The time is not now.
Whatever you want to call his work — magic realism, supernatural realism — he writes like a spiritual nomad, exposing his readership to the existential and cosmic (yes, cosmic!) questions that only art can provoke: What does it mean to carry the baggage of identity? Who is this inside my head in relation to the external, so-called real world? What is the meaning of life? Is the person I was years ago the person I am now? Can a winged sheep change my life? Why is that bald man annoying the heck out of me?