Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Yu-Mei is a good friend, and she gave me a copy of this, her debut novel. I read it over two afternoons and enjoyed it very much. It is tightly plotted, inhabited by memorable characters, and written in a lively style. A Singaporean on the run from the law encounters other overseas Singaporeans who are pursuing lives considered illicit in the country. It is a very clever conceit, executed with verve and pathos. It calls into question the untoward criminalization of Singaporean lives and loves.

It is a novel about family as much as it is about romantic love, a novel about art-making as much as it is about immigration, a novel about dispossession as much as it is about privilege, a novel about ghosts as much as it is about the living. As Sonia the fiction writer asks and answers herself, "What united these wayward stories? The ocean. When she swam, she felt swimming beneath her in the depths a chimera. She couldn't see its form, but it was still an intimacy." Desai makes me intimate with an ocean of feelings.

I read the novel quickly in two sittings, even though it is not terribly well written. The plot is only serviceable, the characters are cardboard thin, and the writing is merely functional. I kept reading to the end, even though the ending was disappointing, because, as I discovered on reflection, that the novel appealed to some of my own worst instincts. I like reading about success, especially literary success, and how it is not truly merited; it sates my envy of others. I also like having my biases confirmed—biases against the publishing industry, against white people, against wealthy and good-looking people; I like to be right. This is not to say that my biases are unfounded; they are an outgrowth of my interactions with a racist, classist and superficial society. However, the angel of my reading self likes to think that great literature challenges our preconceptions and enlarges our understanding, but that was not what happened with my encounter with YELLOWFACE.

 An acute account of Morocco's transition to modernity and independence as depicted through a well-to-do family living in the ancient capital of Fez. The earlier chapters, which establish the seemingly static world of the past, were too leisurely paced for me, although they offer pleasurable descriptions of the old medina and its physical and social environments. The story quickens with the entry of the second son Abd al-Rahman to a "secular academy," where he learns to question authority and, ultimately, to fight for national independence. The daughter Aisha is mainly used as an illustration of the intellectual and social restrictions confronting upper-class Moroccan women; her story does not become integral to the main political plot. The third and youngest son merely hovers at the periphery of the novel. Most interesting is the dark-skinned son from the patriarch's concubine and enslaved servant, whose understanding of his status leads him to become a judge, a cog ...

 A really enjoyable read. I especially appreciate the weaving of the writings of Moroccans into the fascinating story of Matisse in the country, so we get to see not only Matisse's view of the country, but also the country's view, so to speak, of Matisse. The autonomy, dignity, respect, and equality that Matisse gave to his Moroccan human subjects, such as Zorah and the Riffian, is beautifully drawn out from his diaries, interviews, and, most importantly, paintings. I've always loved the mysterious painting "The Moroccans" in MoMA, and this biography makes beautifully clear the history of Matisse's engagement with Islamic art and North Africa that led up to its climactic finish in the painting. Morocco gave Matisse his resoundingly original answer to Cubism. 

 Compulsively readable. Some of the links are highly speculative, but the dots are connected in a pleasing pattern.