Edinburgh

By Alexander Chee

From the best-selling author of How To Write an Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee's award-winning debut is "One of the great queer novels . . . of our time."—Brandon Taylor, GQ

Twelve-year-old Fee is a shy Korean-American boy growing up in Maine whose powerful soprano voice wins him a place as section leader of the first sopranos in his local boys choir. But when, on a retreat, Fee discovers how the director treats the boys he makes section leader, he is so ashamed, he says nothing of the abuse, not even when Peter, Fee’s best friend, is in line to be next. The director is eventually arrested, and Fee tries to forgive himself for his silence. But when Peter takes his own life, Fee blames only himself.

Years later, after he has carefully pieced a new life together, Fee takes a job at a private school near his hometown. There he meets a young student, Arden, who, to his shock, is the picture of Peter—and the son of his old choir director.

Told with “the force of a dream and the heft of a life” (Annie Dillard), this is a haunting, lyrically written debut novel that marked Chee “as a major talent whose career will bear watching” (Publisher’s Weekly).

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Feb 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9780544671874

Alexander Chee

ALEXANDER CHEE is the best-selling author of the novels The Queen of the Night and Edinburgh, and the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. He is a contributing editor at the New Republic, and an editor at large at Virginia Quarterly Review. His work has appeared in The Best American Essays 2016, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, T Magazine, Slate, Vulture, among others. He is winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He is an associate professor of English at Dartmouth College.

Reviews for Edinburgh

[castlelass · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I had previously read and very much enjoyed Chee’s The Queen of the Night, so I thought I would try another. Though beautifully written, the subject matter in this book is too dark and disturbing for me, including child abuse and suicide. It is filled with misery and the occurrence of one horrible thing after the next. It portrays the lingering effects of trauma. The ending offers a ray of hope, but it is just too bleak for me. This book will not keep me from reading another of Chee’s works, but I will be careful to investigate the content beforehand.

[froxgirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This remarkable novel lines up with Ocean Vuong's later On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous as a most empathetic book about growing up as a gay male adolescent, and the author is also of Asian descent. It's like a many-chambered seashell, with the early chapters a painful look at pedophilia, which is not generally considered as directly connected to same sex love. It's also a tribute to friendship and to risk-taking, and to the positive influence of loving parents and grandparents and the awful results when those same relatives cause irreparable damage. The language and structure are deeply executed and memorable.

[reallifereading · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This review is not going to do justice to this book. This book needs a proper, more insightful one than these notes I’m writing. Because it’s the kind of book that makes you go, wow, this is a writer who can write. This is a writer whose words can move mountains, make tea go cold without noticing, tears fall from unsuspecting eyes. This is a writer whom, I imagine, writers look up to, but also are perhaps afraid, wondering, can I write like this too?For Alexander Chee has taken a subject that is ugly and perverse and has sculpted it into something moving and somehow, beautiful.(Autocorrect keeps changing my “moving” into “loving” but really, loving is an equally suitable word for this book.)A young boy joins a boys’ choir. Aphias or Fee is 12 and Korean-Scottish. He may look a bit different from the other boys but like them, he is sexually abused by the choir director.Edinburgh is the story of how he overcomes this childhood trauma and the loss of those he loves.It is no easy read but it is haunting and spectacular, even more so when I realized this was his debut novel. It may seem like a weird juxtaposition but this book was both beautiful and brutal.

[klmesoftly · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Just stunning - one of those books where every line feels deliberate and purposeful.

[peonygoat_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An excellent and sad read about an American boy of partial Korean ancestry who is sexually abused by his choirmaster. The novel explores his life as he grows up as a gay man.