Sightseeing

By Rattawut Lapcharoensap

'This debut show more than mere promise: it is a fine achievement in its own right.' -- Guardian

One of the most widely talked about debuts of 2005, Sightseeing is a masterful storytelling by an award-winning young author.

In poignant, tough, heart-catching episodes, Rattawut Lapcharoensap takes his readers beneath the surface of Thailand to a place that is dynamic and corrupt, full of pride and passion and fear. In these inter-generational stories of luck and loss, mother and son, Thai and tourist, healthy and sick are bound together.

Sightseeing introduces its readers to the young boy and his brother speeding on a moped to the Cafe Lovely, a brothel in Bankok; Priscilla the Cambodian, a girl whose mouth is stuffed with the family fortune; a woman approaching blindness who barters for a last pair of sunglasses; and a pig called Clint Eastwood.

Sightseeing reveals, slowly and powerfully that no place is too far away from home when it comes to pain, anger, love or hurt. It explores through confident and unforgettable storytelling what it means to be a son, a brother, a parent, a lover, a Thai - and a disenfranchised resident of the global village.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Release date: Nov 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781786498700

Rattawut Lapcharoensap

Rattawut Lapcharoensap was born in Chicago in 1979 and raised in Bangkok. He was educated at Triamudomsuksa Pattanakarn, Cornell University and the University of Michigan, where he received an MFA in Creative Writing. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. Sightseeing (2005) is his first book.In 2007 he was named as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists.

Reviews for Sightseeing

[alexdallymacfarlane · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A collection of short stories by a Thai author. This means, crucially, that you're getting stories about Thailand as a complex and real place, not the magical land of golden temples and hookers often described by farang writers. Rattawut is concerned with the regular Thai person, not particularly wealthy, often in a perpetual balancing act just above poverty. He writes about a young boy's relationship with a Cambodian refugee whose now-dead father put all their wealth in her gold teeth; he writes about a young man whose mother is on the verge of going blind; he writes about a teenaged girl whose poor father is losing his cockfights to a rich bully, and the various consequences this has on their family; he writes about a wealthy teenaged boy dodging the draft while his poorer friend cannot; and so on. In some stories, the plot itself is not particularly innovative. The entire emotional arc of the draft-dodging story was predictable, for instance. But the way Rattawut writes allows you to really get into his characters' heads and understand their various decisions, so they are not distant or simple stories, and the Thailand he writes about is a difficult, interesting, complicated place. Definitely recommended, especially for readers of realist fiction or those interested in Thailand/SE Asia as depicted by a local.

[katong_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very strong debut, and could relate to his perspective.. Was an welcome guest to Singapore Writers Festival 2005

[bibliobibuli_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Rattawat Lapcharoensap writes with both compassion and maturity and his Sightseeing is a wonderfully self-assured collection of short stories from a first time writer.All but one of the stories are written from the point of view of teenagers coming to terms with a confusing adult world. And although the setting for each story is Thailand, Lapcharoensap steers well clear of the kind of exoticism that bedevils most South-East Asian literature. Indeed, the Thailand of the tourist brochure is roundly mocked in the opening story Farangs. Says a hotel proprietor, tourists only want "pussy and elephant": "You give them history, temples, pagadas, traditional dance, floating markets, seafood curry, tapioca desserts, silk-weaving cooperatives, but all they really want is to to ride some hulking gray beast like a bunch of wildmen and to pant over girtls and to lie there half-dead geting skin cancer on the beach during the time in between."There's a gritty social realism in his choice of settings: a down-market brothel, a smouldering rubbish-dump, a refugee shanty, cockpits, with many of the characters living on the edge in economic terms. Lapcharoensap has his characters speak in a street-smart, venacular language which eliminates the distance still further.In a collection this strong, it's hard to pick favourites. But I won't easily forget the poignant tale of a son taking his mother on one last holiday before she looses her sight in the title story, and the agonising betrayal of a childhood friendship in Draft. And the last story in the book, Cockfighter - at 80 pages more a novella than a short story - is a real heart-stopper.I've not felt this enthusiastic about a short story collection since Jhumpa Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies .

[awilson_457607 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My office-mate is from Thailand and recommended this book. Stories are about what it's like to be working-class Thai.

[shimmin_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting collection of stories about various people's lives in Thailand. The writing's solid and the personas of the characters fairly vivid. That being said, my enjoyment was limited by the fact that it's a bleak and largely miserable set of stories, with only scarce moments of happiness. All the characters are depicted trapped in harsh circumstances and eking limited pleasure out of meagre opportunities. I don't enjoy those stories when set in the West, no more do I appreciate them set in Thailand. It's not really a setting issue, because it's perfectly possible to write cheerful stories about life in difficult circumstances (see: any historical novel ever), it's an authorial decision. I'd have preferred, if not an artificially cheerful collection, at least a broader range of moods.However, that's a matter of taste, not an issue of quality. The book itself is fine.

[starbox_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

'A country that is dynamic and corrupt, full of pride and passion'By sally tarbox on 2 October 2017Format: Kindle EditionProbably *3.5 for this selection of short stories set in the author's native Thailand but written in English.I was particularly struck by 'Draft Day' where two young friends attend the draft lottery, where those who make it through the selection process must wait to see whether they get a red ball or black (exemption.) As they root for each other, the wealthy narrator observes "What Wichu didn't know then was that he needed my prayers more than I needed his" - his parents have bought him a guaranteed black with a bribe. An end to childhood innocence.Also 'Priscilla the Cambodian', where a playmate suffers Thai anti-immigrant prejudice.In the title story, a young man is accompanying his mother on a first and last holiday as she waits to go blind...Others feature an elderly disabled American ex-pat living in a difficult relationship with his son and Thai wife; a young Thai man falling for a tourist; and a teen girl whose father is caught up in the murky world of cockfighting...Some packed quite a punch- I couldn't put it down.

[gonzobrarian · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Be on the lookout for writer Rattawut Lapcharoensap. His recent collection of stories, titled Sightseeing, is a piercing work that finds a very comfortable balance between the foreignness of Thailand (to an american farang like myself) and the all-too-familiar human condition.Though primarily a collection of coming-of-age stories, Lapcharoensap very cleverly approaches his writing with effortless characterization from various social backgrounds and viewpoints. Whether female, male, young, aged or foreign (American, Thai, Cambodian) all of his characters equally face the unattractive prospect of receiving life’s kicks to the teeth well before they’re good and ready.Perhaps Lapcharoensap may be characterised as the Thai-American equivalent of Larry David, as his characters are often placed in dangerously uncomfortable situations with only their wit to provide comfort. Situations involving elephants and pet pigs named Clint Eastwood, finding “luck” in avoiding the Thai military draft, an american’s involuntary assisted living in Thailand, and the extremes taken to quit the local cockfighting circuit, these stories are both sadly moving yet familiar; thus, they’re nostalgically comforting, as we can relate with our own colorful and cultural equivalents. Sightseeing is aptly named, as it truly is an eye-opening account of the both the foreign and familiar.

[wandering_star_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a collection of short stories set in Thailand, but not a Thailand that any of us is likely to have seen. Most of the protagonists are young, poor Thai men - although while their circumstances might be specific to Thailand, the emotions they go through are very much the human condition. The stories are pretty bleak - people betray their friends, get old and have their faculties decay, or are humiliated by those stronger than them. There are some uplifting/redemptive moments, but ultimately these are stories of the powerless. That certainly makes them worth reading, but I'm not sure that I would want to read them again.