Book Specs 📖

One Sentence Synopsis🔖

Queer coming-of-age story in post-martial law Taiwan between a female university student’s obsession with an older woman.

Notes/Thoughts📝

• I just read the forward about Qiu. After several early literary successes as a lesbian contemporary writer she committed suicide at 26. This tinges the reading with a sour note especially because Notes of a Crocodile was published posthumously. The pleas of the main character, Lazi, begin to sound like the author’s own unanswered cries for acceptance and love. In a world full of desires and possibilities, being lonely can feel like an unending void and death sentence. I wish we could allow people to be who they are.
• I was a late bloomer, so it is fascinating to experience the frenzied passion of young obsessive, impulsive love. I experienced love much later in my life and still, the experience of “being in love” is like no other. I can understand why people find it difficult to let go of their first loves. It’s a part of those milestones that fundamentally changes your brain chemistry. Let’s all yearn a lil’ more, hurt a lil’ more, and be thankful a lil’ more 🙂
• I loved the metaphorical use of alligators (cold-blooded animals alienated and dangerous to humans) to represent the queer lovers that didn’t fit into rigid societal gender norms. Conducting some more research, “Lazi” is a slang word for lesbian, which gained its popularity through this very book!! I thought Taiwan’s progressive culture had legalized gay marriages a long time ago, but it wasn’t until May 24, 2019 that same-sex unions were constitutionalized.
• There’s a good question in the book that I love: “Tell me, is love—along with honesty, patience, and determination—strong enough? Is it?“. Ideally, we’d like the answer to be yes. It’s the sappy happy ending all rom-coms and romance novels wrap with a big bow and deliver to audiences that seek for an illusion. The reality: humans are fickle and travel at their own pace, changing trajectories at any time. Our desires, intimate and vulnerable, once rejected become the proof that we’re unloveable, when in fact, each person is going through their own hero arc. Our biggest suffering is taking a lover’s rejection personally. What I love about this book is that despite the earning and unrequited love, the general message is positive: appreciate the moments when they are here, love deeply, be grateful for having experienced something beautiful.

“Quotes”🗣

“I wish I could fall in love with a man, but there are too many beautiful women.”

“Unhealthy love is two people stoking a shared fantasy of desperate beauty, weaponizing passion and desire.”

“Tell me, just this once, if you still think of me. And let me recklessly, tenderly, tell you one more time: I love you.”

“For a long time, my hidden shame had made me push everyone away. I’d rejected them before they could reject me. I ran away from close relationships even with the people who loved me. I was a blind man fallen into the ocean.”

“Only healthy people are capable of being in love. Using love to treat an illness just makes the illness worse. I realize that’s exactly what I did: I used love to fight illness and it ruined me. I have to change my ways. I can’t be like that anymore.”

“The fact is, most people go through life without ever living. They say you have to learn how to construct a self who remains free in spite of the system. And you have to get used to the idea that it’s every man for himself in this world. It requires a strange self-awareness, whereby everything down to the finest detail must be performed before the eyes of the world.”

“How can the world be this cruel? A human being has only so much in them, and yet you must learn through experience, until you finally reach the maddening conclusion that the world wrote you off a long time ago, or accept the prison sentence that your crime is your existence.”

“Because love goes hand in hand with hatred, and because there’s hatred, you’re going to fight, and when you fight, you see that there’s love. The three become inseparable.”

“What is the human race, anyway, but a multitude of outlets for desires? There’s no suppressing the truths that arise from our experiences. Desires teach us lessons, and we have to go forth into the new worlds that we construct for ourselves…When you can’t, that’s when you die.”

“I guess everyone had a different way of expressing their love. No matter how it comes out, it always finds its way to the person it was meant for. I just didn’t know—or care—if it would last.”

“…the only reason that someone dear to you leaves you is because they love you and you’ll always love them. That’s how it works. A long time ago, I decided I would always love you. My love is that deep. It’s funny, because I completely changed who I was in order to be more like you. You left your mark on me. Did you know that?

“There are many important images in my mind that were captured at strange twists and turns, during the passage from one stage to the next, accumulating a weight I never expected. But I never did say goodbye or thank you to all the people in those images. With a stiff upper lip, I stood back and watched as they slipped out of my life.“

“Life is a process of awakening by degrees, in depth and in scope. At its most profound moments, you experience wholeness.”

“You’re just overly independent. Why not let yourself be needy once in awhile?

Where do I go to find that part of me? I forgot how to rely on other people ages ago!” she said.

“On how to love well: instead of embracing a romantic ideal, you must confront the meaning of every great love that has shattered, shard by shard.”

“You can’t hold on to a beautiful thing forever—not in your memory, not even if you keep loving it. If you tried, it would only die in your possession. Beauty must be free to run its course.”

“The deeper you love, the deeper your compassion grows and the more you realize that the other suffers just as you do.”

The best way for any relationship to end is with the sentiment I wish the best for you, and I am grateful for what we once had together.”

“Admitting that I have problems is a mode of optimism, since every problem has a solution.”

“You’re not a coward at all. You’re brave in a hundred ways, but you’re a coward in one, which is in love. Maybe it’s true that pain is an unavoidable part of existence, but some things are close enough to perfection, and they’re right in front of us They’ve been there all along, you’re just not willing to admit it.”

“Tell me, is love—along with honesty, patience, and determination—strong enough? Is it?“