Another excellent collection by Veasna So. My favorite was the collection of stories about the three cousins grieving their aunt’s death. But I also really appreciated the non-fiction essays sprinkled throughout, on topics ranging from grieving a friend’s suicide to society’s love of “nice” reality TV.

When I first started reading Songs On Endless Repeat I found I was having a hard time being invested. Im not sure why, maybe because I had no idea who the author was before reading, but I quickly came to realize that it didnt matter because his writing is brilliant and tragic at the same time. While I had a hard time relating to some of his non fiction, I could 100% relate to why he wrote it. This was a fantastic collection of essays.

Songs on Endless Repeat is a collection of essays and excerpts from Anthony Veasna So" unfinished novel Straight Through Camboland, So died in 2020, so this book and his previous collection of short stories- Afterparties- represent the totality of his work and a look at potential lost.

The bulk of the book is composed of pieces from Straight Through Camboland. A woman has died and her niece and nephews are dealing with the consequences of her death. These pieces lay out a rich tapestry, a portrait of the life of Cambodian refugees and their children in the United States. The story is rich and interesting and the characters are well-developed. It's a shame we'll never see the finished novel. There's a lot to love here.

The non-fiction essays are hit or miss. I will confess that I stopped reading the essay dealing with reality television and skipped to the next piece. But the essay that closes the book is incredibly powerful and emotional. So writes about dealing with a friend's suicide in striking prose informed by his grief.

This book by the late Anthony Veasna So caught my eye for his essays on family, queer desire, and race. Don’t be tempted to skip over the fiction chapters from his unpublished novel sprinkled between essays. I was surprised to find they contained some of the most real writing I’ve encountered on the intersection of sexual orientation and family. (Specifically, check out the chapter titled “Darren and Vinny.") Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco for the opportunity to read in exchange for an honest review. I'm glad I picked up something different than I’m used to reading.

Like other up and coming artists who died at, or right before their break out moment, the works of Anthony Veasna So will always be presented alongside his accidental death in 2020, but should that be how he's remembered? Joining 2021's Afterparties: Stories,Songs On Endless Repeat is a combined volume of Veasna So's essays and unpublished fiction that highlights his voice, and its skill in cultural critique, humor and insight in to the immigrant Cambodian-American experience.

The volume contains six essays and eight linked short stories. The latter are the book the author was working on at the time of his death, but were also his Syracuse University graduate thesis, Straight Thru Cambotown. The essays embrace a wide range of topics, both biographical and criticism include: mixed feelings about the success of the film Crazy Rich Asians, growing up in a Cambodian enclave in the United States, celebrity life and representation through the Netflix version of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Cambodian American culture clash, and a reflection on the struggle to finish a book, but how it can still be inspirational.

The fiction centers on three Cambodian- American cousins and their extended family, many of them survivors of the Cambodian Genocide. Their aunt Peou was a key figure in the community, serving as an unofficial banker keeping track of debts and paying out money to prior loaners. We learn of Peou and her life, and the cousins in their youth. As the plot progresses, the children have become adults, some successful, others have returned home not quite failures. What has brought them all back home is the death of Peou. They have to reconcile their lives with their families and find space to grieve and lay their aunt to rest. To amplify the difficulty, the two male cousins have both come out and all are struggling with the cultural obligations of tradition from Cambodian life against the individual focus of American life.

The collection ends with the essay Baby Yeah, steeped in the grief and shock of the suicide of Anthony's friend, the poet Will Georges. It's name is drawn from a Pavement lyric, a band they enjoyed listening to together. Veasna So details their shared lives as young students with writing as a passion, and the effects of Georges loss on his life and relationships, it is a deeply emotional farewell.

In his forward, Jonathan Dee, emphasizes that yes Anthony Veasna So's death is a loss, but "it is still a mistake to dwell on what's not here, what he didn't do." Instead we shook focus on "the fact that he left us with two completely unprecedented book-length works of genius..." (pg. 11). Songs on Endless Repeat demonstrate a wide range of the human condition, both in it's frailty and triumph.

5 stars

Fans of Anthony Veasna So will get exactly what they hope for here: more. The reality of this book is tragic: that our access to this writer's great works is limited because his life and his writing life, more specifically, were so short. Fortunately, that doesn't impact the quality of what we do get, and that is an array of previously published non-fiction and, most thrillingly, excerpts from what obviously would have been a tremendous novel.

Readers should come into this experience expecting snippets versus a finished piece. I will continue to savor every word, and I'm so glad we got a few more here.

every time that i am reminded of the fact that anthony veasna so no longer breathes among us i am devastated anew. he amazes me every time i read something he has written; it's not just talent, vision, craft…it's soul. i don't think anyone could replicate what he did in afterparties, and i am crushed that he never got the chance to finish straight thru cambotown. but i'll take what i can get, and what he has given us in this collection, carefully pieced together by those who knew his work the best, is marvelous and astounding.

rest in peace. rest in power.

Published posthumously, Songs on Endless Repeat contained essays and excerpts from an unfinished novel. Anthony Veasna So's writing is funny and moving as always—when I first read Afterparties in 2021, I was struck by how he took tropes of Asian American immigrant stories and twisted them sideways with his sense of humor, and Songs on Endless Repeat reads similarly. A shame we will never get the entire novel or get to see the writer he would someday become, but the words he has left us with are something, to say the least.

A relaxing memoir. Teaches a lot and could be informative to those interested in the author. I read the short story collection and remember it being ok, and yeah I would say similar opinions for this one. It was not gripping but not bad at all.

I first encountered Anthony Veasna So's writing in the 2021 fiction issue of the New Yorker, which contained his essay "Duplex." So's writing, especially his personal writing, is vivid in its descrptions of the people and places he knew best. When you read his essays, you get the sense that he is holding nothing back. He is putting himself, his voice, fully on the page, and his is a wonderful voice: serious, thoughtful, reflective and introspective, yet also witty and hopeful.

While I was familiar with Anthony Veasna So and his breakout success with his short story collection “Afterparties,” this collection of essays and selections from an unfinished novel was my first exposure to his writing itself. I found his essays to be energetic and fresh and a suitable complement to the passages from his unfinished novel that was beautifully imagined and engrossing. I look forward to reading “Afterparties” and to fully understand the breadth of his all to short writing career.

SONGS ON ENDLESS REPEAT is a beautiful capstone to a very short literary career. The book gathers So's previously published nonfiction writing and selections from an unfinished novel manuscript into a single volume. The nonfiction writing is sometimes a bit outdated—on topics such as QUEER EYE and CRAZY, RICH ASIANS that have been so thoroughly processed by the online content machine that nobody needs another take—and showcase a left-wing critique of liberal "wokeness" that has since become mainstream. Even so, it usefully sketches out the contours of So's thought and fills in the gaps raised by his novel manuscript. Though the latter is only partial—ending where the rising action takes off—it reads very coherently. So's beautiful writing and clever mind (though not a great sense of dialogue) are on full display. Any unevenness in this book is forgiven for what it offers readers. It would have been a shame not to publish these works, however incomplete.

I absolutely loved "Afterparties" and was so excited to get approved for an arc of this book. This book did not disappoint and I loved the shorter essay style/format of this book. I could really tell that this author put a lot of work into this book, especially his more personal essays. My favorite parts were reading about his refugee parents as I find that narrative to be so interesting. I hope there will be a part 2 of this book with more stories and works of unreleased fiction. I am sure this author has a ton, and it doesn't necessarily need to be in full book format. It could be released in a blog, email newsletter, etc.