This was a really interesting book that looked at the complexities of modernity and of the changing dynamics if relationships and what is expected of them today. Really interesting!

Moving, emotional, and wonderfully written, I loved the way this book explored sexuality and identity, and showed a character grapping with who they are in different countries and cultures. The author expressed loneliness, sadness, and a yearning to belong so clearly that I could feel the emotions coming off the page as I was reading. I loved the moments when the protagonist found friends and a community that she could trust, and attended pride events in Tokyo, those scenes gave me so much joy. Overall, this is just a beautiful, heart-wrenching book, and I'd definitely recommend it.

Solo Dance by Li Kotomi is about a woman navigating a new life for herself and struggling to accept herself.

A book that is full of topics that interest me: immigrant issues, lgbt themes, mental illnesses, literature and its impact on a reader’s life… The main character is a lesbian from Taiwan moving to Japan and trying to create a new life for herself there. Struggling with severe depression and the shadow of death that accompanies her during most of her life, she tries to create a place for herself, yearning to write, reading and falling in love.

Sounds good? Sounds more than good but the novel was all over the place, touching so many important topics and, in my opinion, not developing anything fully. It’s too short to do justice to everything it tries to show, the main character’s life is a path of every misfortune you can think of and while sometimes the coincidences are beautiful <spoiler>(I really liked both encounters in US and China)</spoiler>, some just make you sigh because it was too much. The language did not help, it was too simplistic (I wonder if this could be the translation’s fault?), the narrator was explaining too much of the character’s feelings and emotions, although they were there, clearly shown and sometimes really nicely depicted. Still, there were a few really beautiful lines that went straight to my heart, especially about writing.

I hoped for much more. I would never say it was a waste of times as it gave me a peek into a Taiwanese woman’s world but other than that, I’d like it to be deeper and if there would be less coincidence maybe…

I wish I could say I enjoyed this book more but unfortunately it fell a bit flat for me. It's a short read and it dealt with such important themes that I wanted to see explored and for the most part, liked how they were constructed. Maybe the fact that it is small worked a little bit against it for me but I kept craving more and feeling like the book at times almost did it and then it just didn't fit together at the same level throughout.

We follow the main character's struggles with her identity and sexuality and go through many trigger warnings as the book progresses. Overall I still liked the book and would still recommend but I was expecting to love it more.

"Many schools in the countryside were keen to raise their standing and the only way to do so was to produce students with good grades who could go on to study at highly renowned senior high schools."

This sentence is representative of the sentences in Solo Dance. I had a lot of interest in the story, and a great deal of sympathy for the protagonist, but the writing is very dull, possibly because in a way it is a double-filtered translation, where Kotomi is writing in her second language, and then I'm reading her via an English translation of that second-language story. Maybe the original prose was pleasingly plainspoken, but, t0 my ear, the English version sounds kerklunked.

It's one of those books I would have tolerated better if it were nonfiction.

Blog:
This is a gut-wrenchingly beautiful read that I couldn’t put down.

The story starts with Cho in Japan. We learn what led to her emigration from Taiwan through a combination of flashbacks and her rereading her own college journal entries. Cho is a writer who has been obsessed with death from a young age. But she also went through a devastating trauma. The PTSD from that event destroyed her budding relationship with another young woman and haunts her to this day.

I think it’s important for anyone considering this book to know coming into it what the devastating trauma was. It’s central to the book and can be quite triggering for some. Cho was raped by a stranger who specifically targeted her due to her same-sex relationship. Although Cho does encounter kind and understanding people who validate how wounded she is from this experience, there are others who expect her to just get over it. Worse, some people blame her for it. She feels shame for what has happened to her. While this is realistic, it is painful to read about.

So this book is about many complex things. It’s about how Cho was obsessed with death from a young age. Why is that? Is it ok to feel that kind of emo way? It’s also about the systemic exclusion of queer and trans people. Cho also travels the world and sees how queerness and Pride and love exist in many countries. While she wants a sense of belonging, just what is the right way to belong is a question left for the reader. Ultimately, though, this is a book about trauma and healing from trauma. How trauma isolates a person, even when other people try, imperfectly, to reach out.

It’s easy as a queer westerner to get caught up in what queerness means in the west. It’s important to dive into what queerness means and looks like in other cultures in order to better grasp how we might create a community that’s more inclusive of all types of origins and experiences.

Although this novella is challenging, it’s also beautiful. If you feel ready to engage with the realistic trauma depicted in it, I encourage you to pick up a copy.

GoodReads:
Get my book club / reading group discussion guide for this book.

I'm still reeling from that ending.

Check out my full review.

*I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.*

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My seagull is telling Jihui’s thorn bird that she’s not alone.
Solo Dance is Japanese literature in translation starring Jihui - a Tawainese immigrant youth Japan who’s also a lesbian who has gone through a horrible trauma. She identifies strongly with the thorn bird. When her trauma is outed at work, she goes through a crisis.
This is a great wya to diversify your reading for #pridemonth! Link in profile to full review on my book blog AND I have a discussion guide available too. See below hashtags for trigger warning. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free copy in exchange for my honest review.

#bookalicious #booksinthewild #avidreader #bookaesthetic #whatimreading #bookrecs #japaneseliterature
Trigger warning: rape, suicidal ideation

I haven't loved a book that much for a long time. Perhaps it was the right book for me at the right time. I could relate to it in so many ways - the world not making sense, of not fitting in, the need to be on the way, the demons that keep haunting you (despite the fact that the protagonist's experiences and mine are completely different). Maybe it is some kind of millenial angsts, the fear of being a cog in a mindless machine, the experience of immigration - or perhaps the underlying fascination with Japanese literature that propels her forward, even if often towards self-annihilation.

It is a story that sucks you in, but also a great lens to look at contemporary Japan: through the eyes of a Taiwanese queer immigrant. It is a book about growing up in Taiwan, about first literary fascinations, about love (and loneliness), and about a love&hate relationship with Japan. It made me finally read Qiu Maojin and I will be forever grateful for that.

I read it in one go and cannot wait to read more books by Li Kotomi in translation.

Loved it enough that we decided to buy the Polish publishing rights straight away.

tw: sexual violence, homophobia, mental health issues, suicide, outing

Solo Dance is a book about a woman, who after a traumatic, life-altering event, leaves Taiwan and moves to Japan for work. She has, in a way, rebranded herself. She has a new name, Cho Norie, and she is ready to move on. But this is a book about contemplation in a lot of ways. She starts off by saying "She didn’t have a strong inclination towards death, but she had no attachment to living either", which is definitely a strong opening. In this book, the narrator thinks about her life up until that point. We see her growing up, some important events of her childhood, and her figuring out she was a lesbian. We see elements of lgbtq communities in Taiwan and Japan, but also the alienation she feels from her coworkers, how much she is doubting herself, and so on.

I truly did think I would end up loving this book, and while I can't say I dislike it, I did not love it. The overall atmosphere of the book is very bleak, and just simply put depressing. Now, I will say, having read the synopsis, I didn't expect sunshine and roses, but the overall feeling has made it slightly hard to read. It is not a light read by any means, so keep that in mind if you decide to read this.

What I enjoyed about the book, is the raw and honest depiction of mental illness, and how all-encompassing it can be, how it can affect every segment of your life. How trauma and past experiences can cause you to be distrustful and how much hurt can seep into your bones and hold you back. It deals heavily which just existing, and how hard, and maybe even more importantly, how complicated it is. How there is no easy way out of something, no right way to be. The book also spends a lot of time talking about some Taiwanese and Japanese literature, and while I haven't read them, it is clear that the author (and by proxy, Norie) holds a lot of love for those works. (and I will for sure check them out!)

I did enjoy the most of the book, and yet finishing it, I had quite mixed feelings about it. I wish there was more of the side characters, though I understand why there was not - this is a very introspective book. I did quite enjoy the writing, but the flow and the pacing were a bit inconsistent, I felt like it was a bit dragging at some times. And probably the biggest reason why my opinion's divided is the ending, and the chapters leading up to it. It felt like an abrupt change (which I do assume was intentional), but by the ending and the finale of the book my emotions were already all over the place and the ending felt more confusing to me than it was probably intended to be. Don't get me wrong, I did like that the book ends on a hopeful note, but the entire part of the book from the moment when Norie starts traveling felt weirdly disconnected from the previous part of the book.

All that being said, I did think this was a book worth reading, and I am glad I did. It does show resilience and (hopefully) that there's something for us even when we lose the ability to see it. I liked how much it dealt with identity, and finding yourself. But bear in mind, it is very dark and depressing at times, so take that into consideration before reading!

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review!

The bird on the cover represents the thornbird who in legend searches for a spiky tree of thorns and then sings it’s most beautiful song as it flies on to the sharpest one and dies. That’s your first image on picking up Solo Dance, even if you don’t know it yet. Once knowing this my first thought was: I expected the bird to look… different. On finishing the book the cover design is perfect, the translation is very good and I am so glad the story has been translated into English.

Someone upended the notion of being happy in life for me a few months ago. She said that happiness was unlikely but contentment was something achievable. Since then, I’ve often wondered whether the pursuit of happiness causes more angst and anguish at the lack thereof. The protagonist of Solo Dance has plenty to be unhappy about, and so potentially does almost everyone else in the novel - although some are happy at times and it’s wonderful to see, however temporary a state it may or may not be. Some are utterly miserable and the novel doesn’t shy away from that state.

The protagonist has a few name changes / alternatives from legally changing her name to using online names, nicknames and for the most part the novel mostly tales about her and she as identifiers (and the translator really has done a good job). She goes from Taiwan to Japan and ultimately San Francisco, Beijing, and Sydney. The novel mostly looks at conversations with other women whether fellow students, colleagues, strangers, and her own messy and frequently all encompassing feelings. But several of those feelings are so relatable or the way she handles her circumstances so understandable. It is not an easy life even with certain support structures, and somehow Li Kotomi manages to look at other countries/people/experiences and show a variation in lived LGBT experience.

There are no easy answers or easy ways of living in this book. Life happens and not all of it is good, especially with the added burden of a marginalised sexuality. The smallness at times of the Taiwanese LGBT community lends to the narrative in a believable way. Personally I enjoyed this book, the style slipping between her office life in Tokyo to her school days and initial mental health issues to her teenage years and a certain trauma, into university and move to Japan, on into the big trip experience some wonderful places (among other reasons). It is a calm narration that doesn’t fall into the trap of distance and respects literature that has gone before which is a nice touch. It is not about joy, but perhaps it is the struggle of living as an individual within society? I’ll keep thinking about it.

I love the way identity is so complicated: sexuality, nationality, residence. In America she says she’s from Japan, in Australia she’s recognised as Taiwanese because of the book she has in her bag. There are random connections that feel natural and attempts at escape that result in reinvention to the point where she’s thought to be wonderfully confident and outgoing (without it being fake) while inside or in the past she isn’t or wouldn’t see herself as that. It’s subtle about the complexities and comes across as a story first and foremost about an individual.

With thanks to NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Solo Dance follows a millennial woman from Taiwan working an office job in Tokyo who feels alienated from her colleagues and their daily conversations about marriage, the economy, and children. Chō, our protagonist, is a lesbian, something she keeps ‘hidden’ from her coworkers. While Chō does hang out with other queer women in lgbtq+ spaces, a traumatic experience causes her to be self-doubting, distrustful of others, and perpetually ashamed. When she opens up to a woman she’s sort of seeing, the latter brutally rejects her, not only blaming Chō for having been attacked but accusing her of having been deceitful (by not having spoken about this before). This leads Chō to spiral further into depression and suicidal ideation, her disconnection further exacerbated by an ‘accident’ that occurs at her workplace. Chō’s arc brought to mind that of Y in Bell Jar, that is to say, things seem to just get worse and worse for her.
As we read of her experiences working and living in Japan as a gay woman, we are also given insight into her teenage years in Taiwan, her slow recognition of her sexuality, her first encounter(s) with women, and that devasting night that resulted in an irrevocable self-disintegration. Chō blames herself for her attack, and not only does she sabotages her relationship with her girlfriend but pushes away one of the few people actively trying to help her. Chō’s uneasy relationship with her sexuality and the physical and emotional violence she experiences over the course of the narrative make for an unrelentingly depressing read.

Throughout the course of her novel, the author links Chō's experiences to those of Qiu Miaojin and of her fictionalised counterpart, Lazi. Both tonally and thematically Solo Dance shares a lot of similarities with Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile: both works interrogate notions of normalcy and alterity by exploring the experiences of women whose sexuality does not conform to societal norms.
Whereas Miaojin’s writing has a more cynical and satirical edge to it, Solo Dance is mostly just depressing. Immeasurably depressing. I knew going into it that the novel would not be a happy read, but, dio mio, for such a short read this book sure is brimming with queer pain & suffering. Because of this, I’m afraid I found Solo Dance to be a very one-note read. Sure, the realities it explores are sadly realistic, but, the storytelling has this flat quality to it that made it hard for me to become immersed in what I was reading. I can’t pinpoint whether it is the author’s style or the translation at fault, but while reading this I felt not so much transported into the story as merely…well, as if I was ‘just’ reading a text that didn’t quite elicit any strong responses beyond finding r*pe, lesbophobia, and suicidal ideation upsetting to read of. The story never reeled me in, which is a pity as the topics it explores are ones close to my heart (i am a lesbian and grew up in a very catholic and not particularly lgbtq+ friendly country).
The dialogues were a mixture of clumsy and dry and some of Chō’s internal monologues struck me as trying too hard to mimic Lazi’s brand of nihilistic angst. Other times it just sounded off, unnatural ("is the stigmatization of my sexuality the source of all my misfortune? This illogical question had plagued her for a long time", "her rational thoughts returned to life and began to talk to her"). The narrative also seemed to go way out of its way in order to make Chō suffer, and while I can sometimes buy into the type of story where one character experiences trauma after trauma (a little life), here I didn't. A lot of the interactions she has with others either struck me as unlikely or just plain unbelievable (from the words spoken by the woman who 'rejects' her to her encounter with another suicidal queer woman).

If you are interested in reading this book I still recommend you give it a shot (just bear in mind tis' a dreary affair). (less)

"She didn’t have a strong inclination towards death, but she had no attachment to living either. While she still had breath in her lungs, she would do her best in life, yet should it ever reach that point where it was no longer bearable, she would choose death without hesitation."
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This quote from the first page of Solo Dance is how the protagonist, Norie aka Yingmei, is introduced. She is a queer Taiwanese cisgender woman who moves to Japan to reinvent herself. As bleak as it may sound, this sets the tone for the whole novel, where a depressed and struggling Norie tries to navigate her new life in Japan.
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With a narrative that oscillates between past and present, Li Kotomi paints a portrait of homophobia, mental illness, and trauma. Solo Dance is simply a sad book that digs deep into heavy topics in sparse prose. Page by page, layer after layer of Norie's fractured psyche is uncovered, and we come to understand and empathize with her.
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Although the good bits outweighed the not-so-good ones, I was disappointed with the ending that did not mesh well with the rest of the story.
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I was reminded of these books while reading Solo Dance:
Violets by Kyung-Sook Shin, tr. Anton Hur,
Dogs and Others by Biljana Jovanović, tr. John K. Cox,
Like Animals by Eve Lemieux, tr. Cayman Rock.
The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei, tr. Ari Larissa Heinrich
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Some more quotes from the book:
"Her memories of Danchen froze that day, never to be revised. Time would never move again for Danchen. But for her, time marched forward regardless."
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"If “death” was the word with the most appealing ring to it, then surely “insurance” was the opposite— a concept that was nothing more than the commodification of humanity’s innate fear of future uncertainty."
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"She was twenty-seven and this real-world conversation shouldn’t feel so remote, but she couldn’t force herself to get interested. There was an insurmountable wall that prevented her from fully engaging with it. All this talk of a decade from now, two decades from now, seemed like the distant future—hundreds if not thousands of years away. A world in which her existence wouldn’t make any difference. That was the true representation of her feelings."
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I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
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3,75/5

She is Taiwanese, lesbian, unhappy. Her identities are fragmented. The story follows the rambling memories of the MC, alternating between a grim past in Taiwan and the present in Japan. She does not fit in anywhere, and she is obsessed with death. As we delve deeper into her past, first as a repressed lesbian and later as a victim of homophobic violence, we come to understand her unhappiness and her inability to engage with life.

This is a powerful exploration of PTSD, chronic depression and social anxiety largely due to having grown up in an inherently homophobic society. The descriptions of trauma and self sabotage feel particularly visceral.

The MC loves literature, especially queer classics by Chiu Miao-chin and Lai Hsiang-yin, and the narrative is laced with biographical details of her favourite authors and literary quotations. The MC’s romantic relationships all seem to begin and develop by exchanging quotes or lyrics. I found the literary references rather pretentious, and I am not fully convinced that is how people fall in love, but this is just my personal taste and other readers might find the mini biogs enriching. As for falling in love solely based on literary discussions, another interpretation is that perhaps the MC never fell in love with people, but rather with the idea of love and being understood. It is consistent with her disengagement from real life and inability to form meaningful relationships with others.

Another feature of the book is the MC’s obsession with names. She goes by different names, Zhao Yingmei 趙迎梅 and Cho Norie 趙紀惠. She also has a tendency to analyse every character’s name when they first show up in the narrative - it gets a bit pedantic. Granted, this obsession with names reflects her obsession with identity, and changing her own name represents an attempt to redefine her self image. But her multiple names get very confusing very quickly, because sometimes her names and surnames appear separately and in different spellings (Chinese or Japanese), without clear indication that they refer to the same person. Yes it reflects the fragmentation of her identity, but it is also really frustrating for the reader. It is also rather strange that her Chinese name is romanised using the Pinyin system (rather than the Wade-Giles system usually adopted for Taiwanese names), which gives it a distinctly Mainland Chinese flavour.

As for the plot, it is coherent, there is definitely character development, but I am not convinced by the resolution, especially how two characters from the MC’s past suddenly reappear at a pivotal moment. It seems too miraculous and abrupt.

So to sum up, I have mixed feeling about this book. I am not fully convinced by the plot and the narrative style - the prose is very spare, perhaps too spare for me, but again that’s just personal preference and others might find elegance in its simplicity. However, I really appreciate the representation of queerness, trauma and depression, so I think it’s definitely worth reading if you are interested in these themes.

Thank you World Edition Books for this ARC 🙌

Solo Dance centers around a Taiwanese lesbian woman who decided to change her name and move to Japan to escape the past that haunted her. Having experienced a life-altering trauma (lots of content warnings for this one) and a continuous experience of homophobia (internal and otherwise), we witness the main character dance around her life alone.

I expected to like this book more than I actually did, hence the average rating. It's a matter of preference, surely, but I'm not a huge fan of how this book is written. I understand that it's a translation so that could play a factor, but I did think the style is probably too simplistic for this genre that it disallowed me to truly feel the atmosphere the book is going for. Although I wish the side characters had more time for me to care about them, they were still able to play their integral parts and I saw how important each character was to the entirety of the story. Also, one could easily see that the author loves writing. The number of books and author recommendations I got from reading this is actually insane, but I bet you I'd go and check it out. On a more positive note, I liked how daring this book is. It didn't shy away from the uncomfortable topics it chose to showcase and I can see that many lesbian (and other queer) women could see themselves in the protagonist. I'm not a huge fan of the ending, but I guess it makes sense for a book like this to — spoiler incoming, please proceed to the next paragraph if you don't wish to read it — end on a rather hopeful note. Spoiler finished.

Overall, I'd recommend this to those who love reading translated works. There are many references to Taiwanese and Japanese cultures and norms as well as interesting conversations about Taiwanese, Japanese, and Chinese figures. Had I known more about those topics, perhaps I would have appreciated this more, but I don't dislike this at all. It just didn't offer anything new for me, but maybe it could do something for you.

Thanks to NetGalley and my new favorite publishing company, World Editions, for this eARC!

[This review will be posted on my blog on the last week of this month. It is also posted on Goodreads right now!]

3.5 rounded to 4.

The narrator, even though we learn her name, is mostly referred to simply as she. Born in Taiwan, but after a shocking event, to escape her past, she moves to Japan. But like in Taiwan, she can’t accept herself and be open about being a lesbian.

Solo Dance is quite a dark and depressing novel that includes <spoiler>sexual violence, homophobia, shame, mental health, suicide ideation, and even idealizing suicide. </spoiler> I needed quite some time to get into the story. At first, I couldn't feel for the narrator. But after a while, I found this novel, as a whole, to be very good. It is full of literary references to Japanese and Taiwanese authors that are mostly unknown to me, and I will check them out.

"This was her solo dance. And now that the dance had begun, she had to see it through to the end."
(I am not sure if I can use this quote in my review because I review an ARC.)

Thanks to World Editions for the ARC and this opportunity! This is a voluntary review and all opinions are my own.

Solo Dance is a heavy but powerful read. There is a large focus on mental health and response to trauma that can be a lot so I would advise looking into detailed content warnings if this may be an issue for you. I thought Norie's journey from Taiwan to Japan to her trip around the world was lyrical and beautiful, heartbreaking yet hopeful. The story is definitely a bit sadder than I was expecting going in, but I think the jump in time between her life in Japan and her life in Taiwan is well balanced and interesting. I also thought the cast of characters she met along her journeys were all deep, unique, and nuanced. Overall, a very strong novel that displays the atrocities that can occur to queer people, while also showing hope for a more accepting future.

Thank you to NetGalley and World Editions for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book is smart and compulsively readable, and takes us through characters who are outsiders among outsiders, their national and sexual identities setting them against a backdrop that does not always seem to want them there.

Although not always an easy read, especially with death hanging over a lot of the book, it is also surprisingly fun and quick in its wit.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A young woman who constantly thinks of death flees Taiwan for Tokyo. The main character was unlikeable and unsympathetic

A very hard-hitting novel with lots of content warnings.
I felt the representation was accurate and I'd certainly read more from this author. Great and important topics are explored and it's a very fast read too.

Thanks Netgalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you, World Editions, for allowing me to read Solo Dance early!

Moving, interesting and powerful, Solo Dance is a novel I won't forget easily!