The Fetishist

I was sold on the hook--a Lolita retelling exploring the fetishization of Asian women...and this novel delivered. Beautiful prose with a farcical build up of events at once entertaining and confronting, The Fetishist was published posthumously this year (Jan 2024), but Min actually wrote the manuscript a decade ago and "abandoned" it. Incredible how the novel feels prescient today given post-Covid Asian hate crimes and the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings. This book captured so many aspects of my lived experience as an Asian American woman and presented no clear answers, which I actually prefer because it's real. As someone who has spent a long time thinking about these thorny topics--white supremacy, internalized racism, misogyny--and had to make life decisions in a world shaped by it, the multifaceted perspectives and complexities presented on "yellow fever" resonated deeply. It's hard to do that and present a well-written, engaging story that is pulsing with forward momentum. The Fetishist is a must-read for anyone navigating interracial relationships.