Taiwan Travelogue

I am a bit mystified by this book.

I picked it up based on its blurb. On the basis of which I expected to enjoy it more. Taiwan, language, food, travel, a good character drama? Ticks all my boxes.

At the same time, I’ve been kind of mystified as to why it appears to be so popular with others? I keep seeing it in bookshops tagged with loving notes. Or gushing book reviews. It apparently did quite well on the award circuit.

I’m sure there’s a story there but I’ve not looked into it.

What I found instead was a curious book, I did indeed love the travel, food and characters. I found the dynamic between its two main characters fascinating, and was as grateful as the protagonist to be taken on a tour of so much great food.

I expected it to go harder on Taiwan’s post-colonial history. But what was there seemed subtle and muted to me. There’s perhaps a meta discourse of this as a book pretending to be “found text” that I’ve missed.

I found the way the names of food were romanised a bit jarring, personally I would have preferred to consume the pinyin or characters directly. So I missed something translating food items back into things I might have come across before.

Whilst all this was enjoyable, the pace felt very odd. Like it was indecisive about its own narrative movement, pushing forward then hesitating. Mix in, a real love of long lists and at times it felt less like a book, and more like something serialised in internet era media. Like my RSS feed has picked up on some old tour of a writer, inexplicably surfaced on Buzzfeed.

I enjoyed it for what it is, and perhaps more for interests I already hold and brought to it. That all feels quite niche though. I would be curious to know what everyone else got out of it though?