i grew up in Bangkok, in its warm and brutal beauty. its symphony of sputtering engines and scent of smoke, petrol, sweet-sour fruit. the pale pink glow of the polluted sky at ‘golden hour’ – that bewitching time of day that soothes for a moment the ache of any sorrow. so much of me is composed of love for that city, and perhaps that’s why this book was both so moving and so disappointing.

the scope of this book is incredibly ambitious. it traces a plot of land from the 19th century into the distant, dystopian future, crossing genres from historical to contemporary literary to scifi. the aim, i’m guessing, was to capture the entire lifespan of a city, from birth to death and beyond. a wonderful concept only partially realised. to do so would’ve required more words or, preferably, more economical ones.

the book draws on the city's textures with evident care and affection, and some passages are incredibly beautiful — a musician hired to play for spirits, a quiet student fleeing from bullet fire, a missionary in the feverish grasp of cholera. the prose is lush, loving, reverent. my issue is that it is almost too lush. the author is clearly talented at descriptive writing, but the effect is somewhat like a snapshot; it freezes time and removes us from its immediacy. it is aesthetically stunning but emotionally distant. in fact, the entire book comes across more like a series of postcards than a narrative. while its loveliness is never in doubt, loveliness alone cannot carry a story, especially not one of this length.

in terms of structure, the chapters are caught in an awkward middle ground — too short for much to happen, too long to sustain the pace of a vignette collection. the chapters jump back and forth through time without clear pattern or purpose, and the sheer number of characters and perspectives means none of them quite stick. the city itself is vividly conjured, but its inhabitants remain more like illustrations of the kinds of people that live there rather than believable characters that i could actually get to know and feel invested in. the start and end were interesting enough, but the middle 50% was a genuine slog.

at times the writing even felt composed for foreign eyes. there was something romanticised and disingenuous about how the author rendered illness, grief, violence, the mundane, even street dogs, in lyrical prose, everything imbued with a whole, impenetrable dignity. it felt deliberately literary rather than reflective of real life — the real lives that came and passed. the construction worker felt symbolic of all construction workers rather than a man with his own joy and anguish. life may always be poetic, but it is certainly not always beautiful. there is meaning in letting ugly things be ugly.

i get the intention: this is a book about a city rather than about the people in it. but knowing a city’s history, its buildings and streets, its rivers and rain, the noise of its festivals and the taste of its food, is not enough. to truly know a city, you need to know the minds and hearts of its people, and that's what felt out of reach.