Interior Chinatown by Charles YuMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I chose to join a college alumni book club in reading this book, but I listened to the audiobook version instead of reading. I’m not sure that was a good choice. The issue is that this book is written, from what I gather from other reviews, in the format of a screenplay. When listening, you don’t get all the context you would get with a visual page in the format of a screenplay, so it is more difficult to follow the action. To me, the story seemed more to blend screenplay and narrative, sometimes making each part easy to define, and other times moving from one into the other without warning. You could be in a long narrative then end up hearing stage instructions. The audio does use different voices for the different characters, so there is some context, but it’s not always what you originally think. This kind of organization was confusing, but it also was interesting. It reminded me of some movies that changed the focus from personal story to background story – I kept thinking of “Pink Floyd’s The Wall” for some reason.
Most book reviews describe how on the face the book is about how Asian actors are pigeonholed into roles, and there are a hierarchy of roles leading to the top, Kung Fu Man. As the protagonist goes through his career he notices other roles that he is pigeonholed into, even beyond acting. An interesting take on self-imposed and societal stereotypes that apply to us all. Weird, but fun to read.
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