NB: I consider Ray Hecht, one of the contributors to this anthology, a friend. *shrug* Take that as you will.
Title: Taiwan Tales Volume 2: An Anthology
Logline: A collection of offbeat tales from expat Taiwan writers.
Verdict: From a haunted hotel to a literate dog to expat friendships and Taiwanese mythology, Taiwan Tales Volume 2 has plenty to offer.
Taiwan Tales Volume 2: An Anthology is a collection of fiction set in Taiwan, the China/Not-China who doesn’t get a seat at the UN dinner table. This book is a product of the Taiwan Writers’ Group. That there’s a Taiwan Writers Group at all is thrilling. Not to say there isn’t a Mainland China Writers Group, of sorts, but membership seems closed except where it concerns the right kinds of people, who produce the same boring shit year after year and ruthlessly cannibalize each other on social media.
The Taiwan Writers Group is nothing like that. For starters, they have creativity. What they’ve produced is a delightful collection of stories displaying a variety of styles. Amazing what can flourish in the absence of myopic gatekeepers who cum tribute Wish Lanterns.
Room 602 tells of a haunted hotel room, Notes from Underfoot is written from the perspective of a family fog, The Taipei Underground continues Ray Hecht’s exploration of the emptiness of the modern dating scene. Bob, the Unfriendly Ghost vs. the Mother Plant tells of an expat’s hallucinogenic experience via a South American vine. Underworld involves a man’s journey underneath Taiwan, into a world of Taiwanese mythology. If you’re interested in desperate expat creeps, Connor Bixby has you covered with A Complete Normal Male Expat and the anthology ends with Onus, a tale of an expat friendship and a dark past.
A lot of good in here, but it doesn’t all land softly. Bob, the Unfriendly Ghost vs The Modern Plant didn’t work for me. Onus stretches believability a bit, though it makes some great points about the fleeting nature of expat friendships and is actually my favorite story in the book. On the other hand, A Completely Normal Male Expat provides a fresh take on the pitiful expat male trope while Notes from Underfoot alone is worth purchasing the book for.
If you’re looking for an interesting read, you’d do well to check out Taiwan Tales Volume 2: An Anthology. It contains writers of various styles and stories that stand out from one another, a prime example of what I wish I could see from mainland writers.
Taiwan Tales Volume 2: An Anthology is available at Amazon. Check out the Taiwan Writers Group here.
Quotes:
In person, they ignored each other. Work was one world, and there they had their own separate reality. There was no need to actually speak.
All the while the silence from his phone was deafening. Once it was a source of happiness, and now it represented cold, still death.
It seems anyone who fails as a person in an English-speaking country has a second and third shot in places like this, where others can’t see through their vacant souls so easily.
When you begin as an expat, you start relationships like you would back home, with the hopes of a long-term friendship. Then, that friend you spent all your free time with that one year goes home and you never hear from them again. Your heart breaks. You make another friend. Maybe you keep in touch with this one when they leave, maybe not, but the point is, you start to feel a strain. A struggle. So, at the words, “I’m leaving in six months,” or “I’m not sure how long I’m here for,” you learn to run.
We were almost living that “in a perfect world” dream, but we weren’t close enough to catch on fire and be lost forever.
