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Edinburgh
'Every word makes me ache . Written with exquisite empathy and grace' Roxane Gay
'Singularly beautiful and psychologically harrowing . One of the best American novels of this century' Boston Globe
Twelve-year-old Fee is a shy Korean American boy and a newly named section leader of the first sopranos in his local boys' choir. At their summer camp, situated in an idyllic and secluded lakeside retreat, Fee grapples with his complicated feelings towards his best friend, Peter. But as Fee comes to learn how the director treats his section leaders, he is so ashamed he says nothing of the abuse, not even when Peter is in line to be next. When the director is arrested, Fee tries to forgive himself for his silence. Yet the actions of the director have vast consequences, and in their wake, Fee blames only himself.
In the years that follow he slowly builds a new life, teaching near his hometown. There, he meets a young student who is the picture of Peter - and is forced to confront the past he believed was gone.
'Singularly beautiful and psychologically harrowing . One of the best American novels of this century' Boston Globe
Twelve-year-old Fee is a shy Korean American boy and a newly named section leader of the first sopranos in his local boys' choir. At their summer camp, situated in an idyllic and secluded lakeside retreat, Fee grapples with his complicated feelings towards his best friend, Peter. But as Fee comes to learn how the director treats his section leaders, he is so ashamed he says nothing of the abuse, not even when Peter is in line to be next. When the director is arrested, Fee tries to forgive himself for his silence. Yet the actions of the director have vast consequences, and in their wake, Fee blames only himself.
In the years that follow he slowly builds a new life, teaching near his hometown. There, he meets a young student who is the picture of Peter - and is forced to confront the past he believed was gone.
240 pages, Paperback
First published October 16, 2001
341 people are currently reading
16.8k people want to read
About the author
Alexander Chee
25books1,852followers"Alexander Chee is the best new novelist I've seen in some time. Edinburgh is moody, dramatic - and pure."--Edmund White
“A complex, sophisticated, elegant investigation of trauma and desire - like a white hot flame.�--Joyce Hackett, in The Guardian
“A coming-of-age novel in the grand Romantic tradition, where passions run high, Cupid stalks Psyche, and love shares the dance floor with death . . . A lovely, nuanced, never predictable portrait of a creative soul in the throes of becoming.�--Washington Post Book World
Alexander Chee was born in South Kingston, RI, and raised in South Korea, Guam, Truk and Maine. He attended Wesleyan University and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, an NEA Fellowship in Fiction, fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and was the Visiting Writer at Amherst College from 2006-2010.
His first novel, Edinburgh, won the Michener, the AAWW Lit Award, the Lambda Editor's Choice Prize and was named a Booksense 76 Pick and a Publisher's Weekly Best Book of the Year. His second novel, The Queen of the Night, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2011. He lives in New York City.
“A complex, sophisticated, elegant investigation of trauma and desire - like a white hot flame.�--Joyce Hackett, in The Guardian
“A coming-of-age novel in the grand Romantic tradition, where passions run high, Cupid stalks Psyche, and love shares the dance floor with death . . . A lovely, nuanced, never predictable portrait of a creative soul in the throes of becoming.�--Washington Post Book World
Alexander Chee was born in South Kingston, RI, and raised in South Korea, Guam, Truk and Maine. He attended Wesleyan University and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, an NEA Fellowship in Fiction, fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and was the Visiting Writer at Amherst College from 2006-2010.
His first novel, Edinburgh, won the Michener, the AAWW Lit Award, the Lambda Editor's Choice Prize and was named a Booksense 76 Pick and a Publisher's Weekly Best Book of the Year. His second novel, The Queen of the Night, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2011. He lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 806 reviews
March 3, 2016
A sad and powerful story of sexual abuse and human resilience. Twelve-year-old Aphias Zee (nicknamed "Fee"), a talented singer, joins a renowned boys' choir in Maine. While his Korean and Scottish ancestry sets him apart from his peers, his most horrid suffering ties them all together: Fee, like others in his cohort, receives sexual abuse from Big Eric, their choir director. Upon Big Eric's eventual imprisonment, Fee must find a way to survive the demons of his past - even when all his former friends perish in the process.
This book has so much necessary sadness. Fee undergoes awful trauma, and Chee writes about it in a poetic way without romanticizing Fee's hardship. Chee's prose showcases his cultural sensitivity and his penchant for the finer nuances of language. He releases Fee's waves of sadness onto us in a way we can comprehend, even if Fee cannot. We need more books like this: books that depict ugly, despairing truths, so we can see them for what they are and work to prevent them.
Chee's descriptions of Fee's relationships reveal the extent to which abuse perpetuates itself. He shows how Fee copes with his homosexuality and his distrust with himself, all to highlight the devastating effects of trauma. While Hanya Yanagihara approaches childhood abuse with a broadsword in her masterful book A Little Life, Chee does so with a rapier, portraying the subtle, insidious repercussions of Fee's past.
Chee ends his book with a message of hope, a reprieve from the well-written anguish so consistent in Edinburgh. I would recommend this story to anyone interested in abuse and its consequences. I encourage self-care while reading this one: though important and rendered with a delicate hand, it leaves a lasting emotional impact.
This book has so much necessary sadness. Fee undergoes awful trauma, and Chee writes about it in a poetic way without romanticizing Fee's hardship. Chee's prose showcases his cultural sensitivity and his penchant for the finer nuances of language. He releases Fee's waves of sadness onto us in a way we can comprehend, even if Fee cannot. We need more books like this: books that depict ugly, despairing truths, so we can see them for what they are and work to prevent them.
Chee's descriptions of Fee's relationships reveal the extent to which abuse perpetuates itself. He shows how Fee copes with his homosexuality and his distrust with himself, all to highlight the devastating effects of trauma. While Hanya Yanagihara approaches childhood abuse with a broadsword in her masterful book A Little Life, Chee does so with a rapier, portraying the subtle, insidious repercussions of Fee's past.
Chee ends his book with a message of hope, a reprieve from the well-written anguish so consistent in Edinburgh. I would recommend this story to anyone interested in abuse and its consequences. I encourage self-care while reading this one: though important and rendered with a delicate hand, it leaves a lasting emotional impact.
February 20, 2019
There are certain books that so utterly evoke the depth of human emotions that all the trappings that make a novel what it is (plot, setting, characters) become secondary to the emotional landscape that the reader must traverse. This is a novel of total sensory immersion; right along with the characters I felt shame and weakness and guilt and angst, the pain of childhood innocence being lost, and the way that children are powerless to prevent it. This novel is a like howl into a bottomless void, from which no words are echoed, only sparks of light and pools of shadow. So evocative are these beautiful words that the pages throb with the elegiac music of ravaged souls, boys tossed into the lion's den to be eaten and reborn as myths of themselves. The novel is both dream and lucid recollection, confessional and pleading. It is a song for the beautiful boys who learn to make no distinction between survival and self-preservation, who learn to sing requiems for their shorn youths.
September 6, 2009
What is so remarkable about Alexander Chee’s debut novel Edinburgh is that he does what is so very difficult to do: he takes what is ugly and despicable and creates a compelling, utterly truthful and, yes, an even beautiful story of it. By interweaving his prose with Korean folklore, Chee imbues the novel with an almost dreamlike state, one where the dream is equal parts part nightmare and a rose-tinted remembrance of a childhood gone too quickly.
Aphias Zee (nicknamed Fee) is a 12-year-old singer in a Maine boys� choir where it is revealed that the choir director, Big Eric, is selectively choosing boys from the group, grooming them and then subjecting them to frequent sexual abuse. As the book progresses we see the relationship Fee has with the other boys in the group and his especially strong connection with one of Big Eric’s favorite boys, Peter. We are drawn in and feel the pain Fee does when he sees what the choir director is doing, understanding it for what it is, but not being able to distance the sexual abusers� horrible acts from his own emerging homosexuality and his own attraction to Peter.
But what Fee--who is a mix of Korean and Scottish parentage--also cannot reconcile for himself is the fact that he isn’t like Peter, he isn’t fair-haired and therefore isn’t one of Big Eric’s favorites. In this way, Chee explores two fascinating and remarkable aspects of Fee’s life: the complexity and emotionally confusing relationship the abused can sometimes have with their perpetrator, as well as the devastating feeling of being an outsider, of being a young child who doesn’t look like the majority of others. It is a fascinating dance that Chee performs and he does it subtly, with characters and prose that are rich and full and deeply human.
Years later, when Fee is grown--having barely survived a deeply self-destructive period--the unease of his youth hands like a storm cloud over his present. He begins teaching at a prep school where he encounters an appealing student named Warden. With this turn of events, Chee brilliantly weaves in an impending sense of danger that permeates the latter half of the book. We worry for the grown Fee. We feel for Warden. The result is a deeply complex set of emotions the reader is put through: we dread Fee’s attraction to Warden; we sense Fee’s deep need to pay a penance for a sin he did not commit; we know the danger if Fee goes down the wrong path; we understand the guilt Fee carries for surviving what others did not. It is a brilliant balancing act, showing us with complete, subtle honesty how the effect of sexual abuse upon a child can sometimes linger long into adulthood.
Edinburgh is not an easy read. Those who have survived such childhood traumas may especially have a difficult time with it, but the story and the dynamics between the characters are truthful, sometimes beautiful and other times terribly ugly, and the novel is--when all is said and done--masterfully written and flawlessly executed. A fascinating, compelling and moving work that should not be missed.
Aphias Zee (nicknamed Fee) is a 12-year-old singer in a Maine boys� choir where it is revealed that the choir director, Big Eric, is selectively choosing boys from the group, grooming them and then subjecting them to frequent sexual abuse. As the book progresses we see the relationship Fee has with the other boys in the group and his especially strong connection with one of Big Eric’s favorite boys, Peter. We are drawn in and feel the pain Fee does when he sees what the choir director is doing, understanding it for what it is, but not being able to distance the sexual abusers� horrible acts from his own emerging homosexuality and his own attraction to Peter.
But what Fee--who is a mix of Korean and Scottish parentage--also cannot reconcile for himself is the fact that he isn’t like Peter, he isn’t fair-haired and therefore isn’t one of Big Eric’s favorites. In this way, Chee explores two fascinating and remarkable aspects of Fee’s life: the complexity and emotionally confusing relationship the abused can sometimes have with their perpetrator, as well as the devastating feeling of being an outsider, of being a young child who doesn’t look like the majority of others. It is a fascinating dance that Chee performs and he does it subtly, with characters and prose that are rich and full and deeply human.
Years later, when Fee is grown--having barely survived a deeply self-destructive period--the unease of his youth hands like a storm cloud over his present. He begins teaching at a prep school where he encounters an appealing student named Warden. With this turn of events, Chee brilliantly weaves in an impending sense of danger that permeates the latter half of the book. We worry for the grown Fee. We feel for Warden. The result is a deeply complex set of emotions the reader is put through: we dread Fee’s attraction to Warden; we sense Fee’s deep need to pay a penance for a sin he did not commit; we know the danger if Fee goes down the wrong path; we understand the guilt Fee carries for surviving what others did not. It is a brilliant balancing act, showing us with complete, subtle honesty how the effect of sexual abuse upon a child can sometimes linger long into adulthood.
Edinburgh is not an easy read. Those who have survived such childhood traumas may especially have a difficult time with it, but the story and the dynamics between the characters are truthful, sometimes beautiful and other times terribly ugly, and the novel is--when all is said and done--masterfully written and flawlessly executed. A fascinating, compelling and moving work that should not be missed.
July 31, 2024
4.5. Chee’s prose has the same effect on me as Michael Cunningham’s, heading straight for the emotional center of pain until it expands, then releases into a tender beauty. This coming-of-age journey of Fee continues into middle age, allowing the immediacy of what happened before to be viewed anew with wisdom, yet also still contain the still-living, twisted-taut emotions of his youth. There is sexual abuse and suicide and murder in these pages, yet they are either never seen or momentary, leaving Chee to explore and reveal the emotional trauma wresting inside his characters without sensationalism. Add to that the touch of Korean folklore that plays on the reader’s subconscious, and we have an exquisite debut.
If Cunningham’s, Flesh and Blood, asks us if we inherit the way we love, Chee here asks if who we love is forever shaped by our first. And he makes a good argument for a yes. Told with tremendous compassion for all characters without letting anyone off the hook, Chee also brought to mind, “There but for the grace of God, go I.� In a journey that is also about self-realization, he invites us to dance between impulse and choice, and how each contributes to composing a life.
If Cunningham’s, Flesh and Blood, asks us if we inherit the way we love, Chee here asks if who we love is forever shaped by our first. And he makes a good argument for a yes. Told with tremendous compassion for all characters without letting anyone off the hook, Chee also brought to mind, “There but for the grace of God, go I.� In a journey that is also about self-realization, he invites us to dance between impulse and choice, and how each contributes to composing a life.
March 11, 2023
Haunting, heart-wrenching, luminous, and lyrical, Edinburgh is as beautiful as it is harrowing. It certainly my made my heart ache. Rarely have I read a novel that is able to capture with such precision and intensity the ways in which trauma affects one's memory and one's perception, of one's own self, of the spaces one inhabit, and of the people around them. There is a fragmented quality to Fee’s recollection of childhood and adolescence, that makes us all the more aware of what is being elided.
Alexander Chee is a wordsmith, whose prose expresses the duality between beauty and ugliness, between pain and joy, between self-restraint and vulnerability, between loneliness and connection, between intimacy and unknowability. There is something quietly devastating about Chee’s portrayal and interrogation of trauma, shame, guilt, and grief. His prose echoes the way Fee’s psyche has been irrevocably altered by the abuse he was subjected to and by his belief that he is complicit in the abuse of the other victims. Fee’s narration at times is strikingly evocative, as he hones in on a sensation, an image, a feeling or a thought, bringing that moment to life with startling intensity. Yet this razor-sharp clarity sometimes gives way to moments that are more ambiguous, and opaque, where we are given fleeting impressions or a single snapshot, but not the whole picture.
Fee looks back to his childhood, when aged 12, he joined his local boys' choir. Despite becoming close to several of the other boys, Fee is keenly aware of his difference. Not only he is the only Korean-American kid in the choir, and often subjected to peoples� prying about ‘what he is�, but for the way he feels about his best friend, Peter.
We soon become aware that the director of the choir, Big Eric, acts strangely with his students and his predatory behavior only escalates when he takes them to a summer camp. Although Big Eric mainly targets boys who are blue-eyed and blond, Fee doesn’t escape his ‘notice�. The abuse Fee experiences muddy his feelings for Peter, who is also being abused by Big Eric. Big Eric seems to ‘know� that Fee is gay, something that he uses to his advantage, as he tries to make Fee believe that paedophilia is ‘natural�, that it was ‘normal� in the ancient world, and is not frowned upon is more ‘progressive� countries. Big Eric also seems jealous of Fee's closeness to Peter and Zach, another boy in the choir.
Although Fee remains distrustful and repelled by Big Eric, he begins to view his own desire as something ugly, something he has to be ashamed of, and something that he has to keep a secret. Believing that if the rest of the world knew Big Eric, they would know about Fee himself, he dissuades Peter from telling the adults about their ongoing abuse. The boys don’t talk about the abuse, as if dissociating themselves from it and Big Eric, but despite their not talking about it they grapple with the pain, shame, and fear abuse leaves in its wake. Chee counterpoints the anxiety, confusion, and misery they experience because of Big Eric, with scenes and moments that are almost idyllic: Fee swimming with the other boys, playing with them, or spending time with his grandparents who recount to him a family legend that comes to resonate deeply with him. Yet, these moments of lightness, of contentment, are often tinged with unease, and no matter how hard Fee tries to separate himself from his abuse, he cannot escape the reality of it.
Eventually, Big Eric is arrested. Fee’s family is horrified to learn the truth and struggles to make sense of something that is beyond ‘sense�. Fee continues to feel weighed down by his feeling of guilt, and more and more he finds himself thinking of death, his own one in particular. And when the two people who were closest to him, the two people who knew what it was like to go through what they went through, are no longer there, Fee is unmoored.
When Fee becomes the researcher for a history scholar he reads a letter by a Norman in 14th-century Edinburgh who, following the outbreak of the plague, is sealed off, in what should have become a cathedral. The only survivor, buried alive, the writer envisions being able to return to the world outside, where he will “Disguise myself from those who know me to be dead�. This idea, of a burial and of a reemergence, of death and rebirth, sparks something in Fee, and he feels compelled to create a series of tunnels on a nearby hilltop.
Yet, the past is unrelenting and Fee finds himself haunted by it as he heads off to university. There Fee finds himself projecting his feelings for Peter onto his roommate, even if doing so will just cause him more sorrow. Self-destructive, lonely, and unable to reconcile himself with his own existence, Fee seeks numbness, nothingness, and unknowability. But it is there that he begins to test and explore his own creativity, in particular with ceramics, and begins to envision not quite a life of happiness but a way out.
Years later Fee has a boyfriend and works as a teacher at a high school not far from where he grew up. One of his students, Warden, bears a striking resemblance to Peter, and despite his desire and efforts to leave his past behind and to break away from destructive patterns, Fee struggles to distance himself from Warden. His efforts are made all the more difficult by the fact Warden has grown deeply infatuated with him.
When Big Eric is released, the situation becomes all the more precarious.
Edinburgh is one of those novels I find hard to talk/write about as it is one of those books I didn’t read as much as I experienced. Chee exerts enormous restraint throughout the narrative so that not one word feels wasted or inconsequential. The depth and intensity of Fee’s feelings are often rendered indirectly, sometimes through their absence, or they appear faraway as if submerged by water. Fee’s connection to the tale of Lady Tammano, a fox who transforms into a girl after falling in love with a man, gives his narrative a dreamlike quality, as this myth becomes a lens through which he views his experiences.
Fee’s voice is captivating, even if we are not always privy to his motivations or his innermost feelings and thoughts. Rather we are given after-images of what he feels and thinks, in a way that feels far more evocative than having them laid out on the page.
For all the beauty of Chee’s language, this novel is permeated by unease. From the opening pages to the very last ones, I was filled with apprehension, yet, unable to do anything but read on. Chee is unsparing in his depiction of trauma, guilt, grief, and, trickier still, the absence of feeling. Yet, he displays such emotional intelligence and empathy that his narrative never feels gratuitous or shallow. There was a lot in here that resonated with me, especially when it comes to Fee’s longing for someone who is no longer there or unable to reciprocate his feelings, as well as his bone-deep yearning to be gone.
There are so many motifs, like those of fire, water, silence, and singing, that makes the narrative all the more evocative.
Despite the story’s heavy themes, Edinburgh is a work of scintillating beauty. Chee is able to present his readers with a gripping coming of age, an acute character study, and a heart-wrenching exploration of abuse and its aftermath.
Alexander Chee is a wordsmith, whose prose expresses the duality between beauty and ugliness, between pain and joy, between self-restraint and vulnerability, between loneliness and connection, between intimacy and unknowability. There is something quietly devastating about Chee’s portrayal and interrogation of trauma, shame, guilt, and grief. His prose echoes the way Fee’s psyche has been irrevocably altered by the abuse he was subjected to and by his belief that he is complicit in the abuse of the other victims. Fee’s narration at times is strikingly evocative, as he hones in on a sensation, an image, a feeling or a thought, bringing that moment to life with startling intensity. Yet this razor-sharp clarity sometimes gives way to moments that are more ambiguous, and opaque, where we are given fleeting impressions or a single snapshot, but not the whole picture.
Fee looks back to his childhood, when aged 12, he joined his local boys' choir. Despite becoming close to several of the other boys, Fee is keenly aware of his difference. Not only he is the only Korean-American kid in the choir, and often subjected to peoples� prying about ‘what he is�, but for the way he feels about his best friend, Peter.
We soon become aware that the director of the choir, Big Eric, acts strangely with his students and his predatory behavior only escalates when he takes them to a summer camp. Although Big Eric mainly targets boys who are blue-eyed and blond, Fee doesn’t escape his ‘notice�. The abuse Fee experiences muddy his feelings for Peter, who is also being abused by Big Eric. Big Eric seems to ‘know� that Fee is gay, something that he uses to his advantage, as he tries to make Fee believe that paedophilia is ‘natural�, that it was ‘normal� in the ancient world, and is not frowned upon is more ‘progressive� countries. Big Eric also seems jealous of Fee's closeness to Peter and Zach, another boy in the choir.
Although Fee remains distrustful and repelled by Big Eric, he begins to view his own desire as something ugly, something he has to be ashamed of, and something that he has to keep a secret. Believing that if the rest of the world knew Big Eric, they would know about Fee himself, he dissuades Peter from telling the adults about their ongoing abuse. The boys don’t talk about the abuse, as if dissociating themselves from it and Big Eric, but despite their not talking about it they grapple with the pain, shame, and fear abuse leaves in its wake. Chee counterpoints the anxiety, confusion, and misery they experience because of Big Eric, with scenes and moments that are almost idyllic: Fee swimming with the other boys, playing with them, or spending time with his grandparents who recount to him a family legend that comes to resonate deeply with him. Yet, these moments of lightness, of contentment, are often tinged with unease, and no matter how hard Fee tries to separate himself from his abuse, he cannot escape the reality of it.
Eventually, Big Eric is arrested. Fee’s family is horrified to learn the truth and struggles to make sense of something that is beyond ‘sense�. Fee continues to feel weighed down by his feeling of guilt, and more and more he finds himself thinking of death, his own one in particular. And when the two people who were closest to him, the two people who knew what it was like to go through what they went through, are no longer there, Fee is unmoored.
When Fee becomes the researcher for a history scholar he reads a letter by a Norman in 14th-century Edinburgh who, following the outbreak of the plague, is sealed off, in what should have become a cathedral. The only survivor, buried alive, the writer envisions being able to return to the world outside, where he will “Disguise myself from those who know me to be dead�. This idea, of a burial and of a reemergence, of death and rebirth, sparks something in Fee, and he feels compelled to create a series of tunnels on a nearby hilltop.
Yet, the past is unrelenting and Fee finds himself haunted by it as he heads off to university. There Fee finds himself projecting his feelings for Peter onto his roommate, even if doing so will just cause him more sorrow. Self-destructive, lonely, and unable to reconcile himself with his own existence, Fee seeks numbness, nothingness, and unknowability. But it is there that he begins to test and explore his own creativity, in particular with ceramics, and begins to envision not quite a life of happiness but a way out.
Years later Fee has a boyfriend and works as a teacher at a high school not far from where he grew up. One of his students, Warden, bears a striking resemblance to Peter, and despite his desire and efforts to leave his past behind and to break away from destructive patterns, Fee struggles to distance himself from Warden. His efforts are made all the more difficult by the fact Warden has grown deeply infatuated with him.
When Big Eric is released, the situation becomes all the more precarious.
Edinburgh is one of those novels I find hard to talk/write about as it is one of those books I didn’t read as much as I experienced. Chee exerts enormous restraint throughout the narrative so that not one word feels wasted or inconsequential. The depth and intensity of Fee’s feelings are often rendered indirectly, sometimes through their absence, or they appear faraway as if submerged by water. Fee’s connection to the tale of Lady Tammano, a fox who transforms into a girl after falling in love with a man, gives his narrative a dreamlike quality, as this myth becomes a lens through which he views his experiences.
Fee’s voice is captivating, even if we are not always privy to his motivations or his innermost feelings and thoughts. Rather we are given after-images of what he feels and thinks, in a way that feels far more evocative than having them laid out on the page.
For all the beauty of Chee’s language, this novel is permeated by unease. From the opening pages to the very last ones, I was filled with apprehension, yet, unable to do anything but read on. Chee is unsparing in his depiction of trauma, guilt, grief, and, trickier still, the absence of feeling. Yet, he displays such emotional intelligence and empathy that his narrative never feels gratuitous or shallow. There was a lot in here that resonated with me, especially when it comes to Fee’s longing for someone who is no longer there or unable to reciprocate his feelings, as well as his bone-deep yearning to be gone.
There are so many motifs, like those of fire, water, silence, and singing, that makes the narrative all the more evocative.
Despite the story’s heavy themes, Edinburgh is a work of scintillating beauty. Chee is able to present his readers with a gripping coming of age, an acute character study, and a heart-wrenching exploration of abuse and its aftermath.
August 8, 2015
Most people have rated this book very highly so it must have been a serious emotional experience for them. It vies with Hanya Yanagihara's recent as the weepiest, most depressing literary fiction so far this century. If you like reading about the suicides of gay boys and men, of adults sexually abusing choir boys, of children killing their parents, of gay men drifting aimlessly through life, damaged by their childhoods, seemingly connected to their friends but actually suffering in terrible emotional isolation, then you'll love both these books.
Neither are my taste at all. And I am a gay man, a member of the target audience. Sorry. For not liking Edinburgh, I mean.
It was published in November, 2001, a most unpropitious moment just after 9/11, which probably ruined its market value since nobody wanted to read depressing books at that awful time. It's probably taken until nearly now for readers to want those types of books again, at least in quantities worth publishing.
Here's something interesting: in Chee's acknowledgements he gives special mention to Hanya Yanagihara for her help, this back in 2001. And now in 2015 we have Yanagihara's book which is remarkably similar to Chee's in tone, character, and purpose, which is to elicit the maximum amount of tears as possible. This has been an admirable literary goal for centuries, but appreciating such a calculated work is a matter of taste.
Going a bit further, one could speculate, just for fun, that Chee and Yanagihara both had similar books in them back in 2001, but she was fortunate not to write and publish just after 9/11, perhaps even waiting until now when the reading public was willing to pay. Fun stuff. But not the books.
Neither are my taste at all. And I am a gay man, a member of the target audience. Sorry. For not liking Edinburgh, I mean.
It was published in November, 2001, a most unpropitious moment just after 9/11, which probably ruined its market value since nobody wanted to read depressing books at that awful time. It's probably taken until nearly now for readers to want those types of books again, at least in quantities worth publishing.
Here's something interesting: in Chee's acknowledgements he gives special mention to Hanya Yanagihara for her help, this back in 2001. And now in 2015 we have Yanagihara's book which is remarkably similar to Chee's in tone, character, and purpose, which is to elicit the maximum amount of tears as possible. This has been an admirable literary goal for centuries, but appreciating such a calculated work is a matter of taste.
Going a bit further, one could speculate, just for fun, that Chee and Yanagihara both had similar books in them back in 2001, but she was fortunate not to write and publish just after 9/11, perhaps even waiting until now when the reading public was willing to pay. Fun stuff. But not the books.
May 21, 2008
Alexander Chee's Edinburgh is necessary, is timely, and is downright gorgeous despite it's sometimes ugly subject matter.
This is the story of Fee--how his life ended up the way it did, on a beach, deciding to live instead of die.
It is also "a fox story. Of how a fox can be a boy. And so it is also the story of a fire." The significance of the fox comes from Fee's heritage--the myths of the shape-shifting fox demon and how that demon returns and speaks through those possessed. Most importantly, it is about how the fox demon turns back into a human being, back into a man.
The significance of fire is that it is how things die; they are set alight and then they extinguish, keeping their secrets:
"Burning hides what burns there. Somewhere deep in him was a memory of light that pierced him from end to end like a spit."
Mostly, it is a tragic love story. Unrequited love. Burning love. The horrible love of a man for young boys. The wondrous love of a boy for another boy. The unbearable love of a teenager for his teacher. The never-ending love of a boy for his lost sisters.
There is also a love so desperate that it sends its owner underground, beneath the earth into tunnels he builds so that he might hide from the love and bury himself alive: entomb himself within it for to do so would mean his beloved was trapped in that moment with him.
This is a rich, many-layered novel, filled with mythical allusions and using language that is always gorgeous. You will marvel at the beauty of these sentences even when what the author is describing is something you do not want to see.
Read it.
This is the story of Fee--how his life ended up the way it did, on a beach, deciding to live instead of die.
It is also "a fox story. Of how a fox can be a boy. And so it is also the story of a fire." The significance of the fox comes from Fee's heritage--the myths of the shape-shifting fox demon and how that demon returns and speaks through those possessed. Most importantly, it is about how the fox demon turns back into a human being, back into a man.
The significance of fire is that it is how things die; they are set alight and then they extinguish, keeping their secrets:
"Burning hides what burns there. Somewhere deep in him was a memory of light that pierced him from end to end like a spit."
Mostly, it is a tragic love story. Unrequited love. Burning love. The horrible love of a man for young boys. The wondrous love of a boy for another boy. The unbearable love of a teenager for his teacher. The never-ending love of a boy for his lost sisters.
There is also a love so desperate that it sends its owner underground, beneath the earth into tunnels he builds so that he might hide from the love and bury himself alive: entomb himself within it for to do so would mean his beloved was trapped in that moment with him.
This is a rich, many-layered novel, filled with mythical allusions and using language that is always gorgeous. You will marvel at the beauty of these sentences even when what the author is describing is something you do not want to see.
Read it.
Read
May 22, 2023genre: historical literary fiction (~1982 & ~1997)Somewhere between a 4- and a 5-star.
MCs: achillean biracial Korean American man & white boy
POV: dual 1st-person
location: Portland, ME, USA & New York City, NY, USA
indie?: yes
The central theme of the book is pedophilia. It reminded me of the biographical movie Spotlight in the sense that both instances of church-related child molestation happened on the East Coast around the same time. Edinburgh was published the same year the original The Boston Globe’s “spotlight� team started the investigation (2001), way before the team won a Pulitzer Prize for it (2003). I picked up this book because it’s queer and Asian, and I expected it to be sad and disturbing but I didn’t know it would also be beautiful in both the writing and the perverseness of the characters.
Edinburgh consists of three parts: when Fee (biracial Korean American) was a boy, when Warden was fifteen, and when Fee was about thirty. Everything happened as the butterfly effect of the boys choir director Big Eric molesting at least twelve boys, Fee being one of them. Even after Big Eric’s arrest, the lives of everyone around Fee—his crush Peter, his fuck buddy Zach, his friend Freddie—are the way they are because of their choir days. As Fee slowly reaches his adulthood, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that everything was his fault. When he meets Warden after returning to his hometown, everything blows out of proportion fast.
The writing is both somber and lyrical; the lives of all the characters crash and burn and everything was written in such an evocative way. I love how Fee and Warden feel and see their surroundings, the ever-present heaviness and yearning in their thoughts. Part one of Edinburgh started when Fee was twelve, before he fell prey to Big Eric, and I did wonder if a twelve-year-old could think like that, like his world has turned sepia.
Chee is also a biracial Korean American gay man. I love how he introduced the Korean folklore of fox spirits into the story (vs Warden thinking himself as a bird) and also touched upon the cruelty the Japanese brought to Korea during WWII—same things happened to Taiwan (assimilation, “comfort women�). It breaks me to learn about what Fee’s grandparents went through and now what Fee is going through. I wish Edinburgh didn’t end as it did, but for Fee, how could it not?
I listened to the audiobook and it made the reading experience amazing. Daniel K. Isaac, who is also gay and Korean American, perfectly portrays Fee: the boy who was hurt, the man who never healed. I love Isaac’s voice, how he just sounded so sad and the rhythm he introduced to the sentences. Josh Hurley also narrated wonderfully as Warden, but we didn’t get as much of him as Fee.
Edinburgh is not a romance and it is not supposed to be romantic. And yet it is deathly beautiful.
content warnings: pedophilia (child molestation, photographing nude children), drowning, sex between children, self harm (cutting, cigarette burns), f slur, pandemic (black death), suicide (self-immolation, gun), use of “handicapped� (school name back in 1980s), AIDS, loss of grandparents, arson, murder, racism, assimilation to Japanese culture, “comfort women�
February 27, 2025
I am finding it difficult to rate and review ‘Edinburgh� as there were some parts that I thought quite excellent and others that did not work for me. The darker aspects of the novel were handled well, with most implied rather than graphic; the focus was on the after effects on the characters. It was very effective. I thought the incorporation of Korean mythology was a lovely addition to the story and I loved the connection between Fee and his grandfather. I felt that the scenes with Fee’s family, friends and first employer added more to the story than most of the later scenes during the college time period.
However, the second half of the novel did not maintain the same depth and focus as the first. The third section needed a lot more development if it was going to be included at all, in my opinion. The fourth section too, I no longer felt connected with what Fee was thinking and experiencing and there were clearly important developments here. There were some odd coincidental or things unconnected to the main story that I felt distracted rather than added to it. The last scenes, the ending, was lovely, and hopeful. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if the second half had focused on these themes, or been longer to give full weight and development to other elements introduced.
However, the second half of the novel did not maintain the same depth and focus as the first. The third section needed a lot more development if it was going to be included at all, in my opinion. The fourth section too, I no longer felt connected with what Fee was thinking and experiencing and there were clearly important developments here. There were some odd coincidental or things unconnected to the main story that I felt distracted rather than added to it. The last scenes, the ending, was lovely, and hopeful. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if the second half had focused on these themes, or been longer to give full weight and development to other elements introduced.
February 20, 2019
I find myself breathless reading the work of Alexander Chee. His writing and storytelling has a quality that completely captures me but is so nuanced and complex that my brain has to work double time to keep up. Queen of the Night had me soaring, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel gave me so much to think about and Edinburgh, on a second reading, has broken my heart and mended it once more. It’s so clear why this is the book Hanya Yanagihara most wishes she had published while working at Riverhead. He’s truly one of my favourites.
November 15, 2018
Edinburgh, Alexander Chee's critically-acclaimed debut novel, is a heartbreakingly powerful and emotional read. It is a coming-of-age story which follows the trials and tribulations of twelve-year-old Korean-American Aphias "Fee" Zhe, who lives in Cape Elizabeth near Portland, Maine, and who is fighting to overcome the effects of being sexually molested by Big Eric Gorendt, director of the Pine State Boys Choir. As you no doubt realise, this is far from a lighthearted, easy work. However, the message that emanates from this gut-wrenching tale is one of hope and the triumph of good over evil.
I can certainly see why this work won numerous awards when it was first released in the US back in 2001, and it's nice to have UK Edition albeit nearly eighteen years later. It explores the horrific mental and emotional damage these boys (Fee was not the only victim) go through and how they cope with this trauma. From the opening lines of the novel, we are told of the demise and subsequent death of Fee's first love, Peter. Issues such as mental health, suicide and paedophilia are dealt with in a sensitive and respectful manner, and each of the characters stories force you to contemplate your life too. Through the recurring use of metaphorical expression, powerful, lasting and vivid imagery and ideas take shape and make the story more hard-hitting than it may otherwise have been.
Edinburgh is a story of surviving childhood abuse and the earth-shattering losses of losing those we love, told in a searingly emotive fashion with bravery and absolute honesty. It feels authentic and beautiful, an engaging narrative and characters that are developed well and steal your heart. Brimming with understanding and exploration of topics writers often shy away from, this is the most heartfelt novel you'll read all year, and above all, it illustrates the depth of the human spirit. Chee writes in lyrical prose which sings from each page and is unlike any writing I have ever come across before. I know it'll stay with me for a long time to come. A highly recommended and wonderfully accomplished debut.
Many thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC. I was not required to post a review, and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.
I can certainly see why this work won numerous awards when it was first released in the US back in 2001, and it's nice to have UK Edition albeit nearly eighteen years later. It explores the horrific mental and emotional damage these boys (Fee was not the only victim) go through and how they cope with this trauma. From the opening lines of the novel, we are told of the demise and subsequent death of Fee's first love, Peter. Issues such as mental health, suicide and paedophilia are dealt with in a sensitive and respectful manner, and each of the characters stories force you to contemplate your life too. Through the recurring use of metaphorical expression, powerful, lasting and vivid imagery and ideas take shape and make the story more hard-hitting than it may otherwise have been.
Edinburgh is a story of surviving childhood abuse and the earth-shattering losses of losing those we love, told in a searingly emotive fashion with bravery and absolute honesty. It feels authentic and beautiful, an engaging narrative and characters that are developed well and steal your heart. Brimming with understanding and exploration of topics writers often shy away from, this is the most heartfelt novel you'll read all year, and above all, it illustrates the depth of the human spirit. Chee writes in lyrical prose which sings from each page and is unlike any writing I have ever come across before. I know it'll stay with me for a long time to come. A highly recommended and wonderfully accomplished debut.
Many thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC. I was not required to post a review, and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.
May 20, 2016
Usually I like books that move quickly and have big, tight plots and spare, functional prose. But sometimes I get myself lost in a book that is lyrical and poetic and meandering because it's just too beautiful to ignore. This was one of those books. Even if, like me, you are not the kind of reader who stops to enjoy a sentence, you'll still find yourself doing just that in Edinburgh because it takes a hold of you in a way novels rarely do.
This is a nice compliment to WHAT BELONGS TO YOU, by Garth Greenwell, which offers a different portrait of gay life, but is also sad and lovely and poignant in a similar way.
This is a nice compliment to WHAT BELONGS TO YOU, by Garth Greenwell, which offers a different portrait of gay life, but is also sad and lovely and poignant in a similar way.
October 8, 2023
lyrical, haunting, complex, and profound.
the novel explores themes of identity, sexuality, race, trauma, and the search for belonging.
chee's writing is unbelievably beautiful - i can't seem to stop thinking about this book.
the novel explores themes of identity, sexuality, race, trauma, and the search for belonging.
chee's writing is unbelievably beautiful - i can't seem to stop thinking about this book.
Read
June 14, 2011A wrenchingly beautiful and unbearably sad look at abuse and its aftermath. I read this years ago, but it still haunts me.
January 9, 2014
This is a heartbreaking and beautiful first novel by (I think) a major new American writer.
The first section, set in New England, details the methodical molestation of Fee, a 12-year-old half-Korean boy by his choir director, who is victimizing several boys simultaneously. Fee's reaction to the experience is complex in the extreme: he hates the choir director, he feels soiled and violated, but he also knows he's different from the other boys, because he's gay. He's hopelessly in love with another boy, but he's also in despair at the example he's just been given of a grown gay man: is this what he will become?
In the second section, Fee is grown and teaching in a private prep school probably modeled on the Phillips Academy, Andover. He's married, if not entirely officially, to his live-in lover and believes he's survived into a reasonably happy adulthood. The molester has been in prison for years. Still, he's torn by his memories of the past and the loathing he sometimes feels for himself -- and then he finds himself the object of the attentions of a beautiful student who, unknown to both of them, is a living link to Fee's past.
Alexander Chee is an extraordinary writer and "Edinburgh" is an extraordinary book.
The first section, set in New England, details the methodical molestation of Fee, a 12-year-old half-Korean boy by his choir director, who is victimizing several boys simultaneously. Fee's reaction to the experience is complex in the extreme: he hates the choir director, he feels soiled and violated, but he also knows he's different from the other boys, because he's gay. He's hopelessly in love with another boy, but he's also in despair at the example he's just been given of a grown gay man: is this what he will become?
In the second section, Fee is grown and teaching in a private prep school probably modeled on the Phillips Academy, Andover. He's married, if not entirely officially, to his live-in lover and believes he's survived into a reasonably happy adulthood. The molester has been in prison for years. Still, he's torn by his memories of the past and the loathing he sometimes feels for himself -- and then he finds himself the object of the attentions of a beautiful student who, unknown to both of them, is a living link to Fee's past.
Alexander Chee is an extraordinary writer and "Edinburgh" is an extraordinary book.
February 24, 2023
Reading this reminded me of the truism that originated on Twitter, "Poets, we get it. Things are like other things." This book is so dense with symbolism and metaphors that it exhausted me. It's a very carefully crafted novel -- too much so, the echoes and mirrors begin to feel too artful. It's an account of the abuse of 12 boys by their choir teacher, and the aftermath: this subject is treated with nuance and compassion, and is explored in a moving and thoughtful way. It's a lyrical novel, examining mental illness, self-compassion and living with unspoken trauma. It's very readable, although at times too allusive. It's a flawed work, but one I'm glad I read.
November 15, 2007
This book is completely fantastic. Everyone should read it immediately. It's about something depressing and over the top: this half Korean half Scottish 12 year old joins an all boys choir and the choir director sexually abuses all of the boys in the choir horribly and endlessly. The book's about how he deals with the evil psychological aftermath. But this is an atypical survival narrative. There's no easy liberation from suffering, which I think is completely realistic and honest. The book is gorgeous, and not at all depressing, I don't think. The writing is completely fucking exquisite. The themes are pretty elusive and complex, but totally fascinating. It deals with ideas of disembodiment and plays with symbols of fire, burning, sound, light, disguise/hiding/displacement/disassociation. The author does spectacular things with color. There are a lot of things about this book that you can't pin down, that you can't fix a label to, which I really like. I found there's a lot of paradox. The book is very much about his psychological and perhaps poetic journey, and is very much about love and loss of love and coming to terms with all of that -- and what it does inside a person. It's an amazing book. And it offers no easy answers, which is right on. It also has various fantastical elements; the writer said in an interview that he engaged in a kind of "novelistic sorcery" in writing this book. I mean, if nothing else, the writing and the imagery is so original and fresh, it's just an exhilarating read. Also, the book won a bunch of accolades, all of which I think it deserves, and more. Ack, I'm gushing....
January 22, 2019
“The survivor gets to tell the story. Have you figured out who survives yet?�
.
After completing Chee’s astounding essay collection ‘How to Write an Autobiographical Novel,� I was desperate to get a hold of Edinburgh, the “autobiographical novel� in question. I will not presume to know how Chee was feeling while writing this book, but I get the sense that completing this story and working over the prose until it was spellbinding, was therapeutic. Because I don’t want to give a lot away (and the summary on the back of my book spilled too much info I wish I had not known beforehand), I’ll keep the summary short: our young protagonist Fee is abused by a man in power (a choir director) from his school. From there, we are immersed into feelings of pain, betrayal, guilt, self-harm, inner turmoil, survivor’s guilt, voicelessness, and powerlessness.
.
There were parts of this book that caused me to be an utter wreck, but the details are not sensationalized nor are we manipulated into feeling these emotions. Truth be told, I was devastated by a particular event that takes place midway into the text (I love when a book can get me to feel this deeply --I was like Chee, why? why? why?) The writing style has a very dream-like and languid quality to it. Here are the three reasons why I say this: 1) the language is very lyrical, melodious (which fits into the musical background of the characters� lives), erotic even. The language is straight-up stimulating. 2) the plot and structure can feel choppy and turbulent, just like how a dream feels, dipping in and out of an emotion or mood without a moment’s notice (which is actually more true to life, isn’t it?) 3) The lack of quotations can be disorienting (again, what a dream can evoke). Sometimes you’re unsure if a character is speaking aloud or thinking. This a good thing, a really good thing. All these factors stimulate your senses and cause you, the reader, to feel unnerved, bothered, pensive, all while having an otherworldly experience. This book had my entire body engaging with it. Brain, limbs, heart, and eyes.
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After completing Chee’s astounding essay collection ‘How to Write an Autobiographical Novel,� I was desperate to get a hold of Edinburgh, the “autobiographical novel� in question. I will not presume to know how Chee was feeling while writing this book, but I get the sense that completing this story and working over the prose until it was spellbinding, was therapeutic. Because I don’t want to give a lot away (and the summary on the back of my book spilled too much info I wish I had not known beforehand), I’ll keep the summary short: our young protagonist Fee is abused by a man in power (a choir director) from his school. From there, we are immersed into feelings of pain, betrayal, guilt, self-harm, inner turmoil, survivor’s guilt, voicelessness, and powerlessness.
.
There were parts of this book that caused me to be an utter wreck, but the details are not sensationalized nor are we manipulated into feeling these emotions. Truth be told, I was devastated by a particular event that takes place midway into the text (I love when a book can get me to feel this deeply --I was like Chee, why? why? why?) The writing style has a very dream-like and languid quality to it. Here are the three reasons why I say this: 1) the language is very lyrical, melodious (which fits into the musical background of the characters� lives), erotic even. The language is straight-up stimulating. 2) the plot and structure can feel choppy and turbulent, just like how a dream feels, dipping in and out of an emotion or mood without a moment’s notice (which is actually more true to life, isn’t it?) 3) The lack of quotations can be disorienting (again, what a dream can evoke). Sometimes you’re unsure if a character is speaking aloud or thinking. This a good thing, a really good thing. All these factors stimulate your senses and cause you, the reader, to feel unnerved, bothered, pensive, all while having an otherworldly experience. This book had my entire body engaging with it. Brain, limbs, heart, and eyes.
January 4, 2024
The beauty of this story is that it is both hard to believe but believable. At some point (you don't think I'm going to tell you when, do you?) something clicked and the book took me over. I didn't find points of connection so much as they found me. Creepy, but beautiful, and somehow revelatory.
December 3, 2019
I read this book in pale morning light on a tram, the windows sweating from the cold outside. I read in in my kitchen until three AM drinking gin tonics, I read it right after waking up, those stolen moments where you know you are already late but want a slice of day for yourself only, a private tender bite. It was only 230 pages but it felt like an eternity. The prose in Edinburgh is a brick of ice, a cristal clear water so cold it makes your feet ache when you step in it. It is to be felt not read. When you give yourself to it surrounds you like a cold mist. I don’t think I have ever had a reading experience where a book creates such a spatial sensation. It is all around you. When you are at work the book is there, sitting on your shoulder. The words knit a blanket around you, a dreamy embrace. There is very little detail in it. Important things are mentioned in passing here and there and if you are not fully committed you will miss them. Alexander Chee has taken a subject of childhood abuse and made something so ethereal of it with his unbelievable command of language. A rare book where not a sentence is wasted not a word unnecessary. But, yet it doesn’t come across like a minimal overly polished novel. It is an alive thing. And it breaks your heart. One of the best books I’ve read this year.
January 23, 2019
Emotionally compelling and hauntingly beautiful, Edinburgh has rightfully earned its spot as one of my favorite novels of all time. It’s literary fiction at its finest. It’s a work of art.
I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but the novel centers around Fee, a twelve year old boy who is sexually abused by his choir director. Calling this book “sad� feels incorrect; rather it instilled in me a deep, unsettling melancholy. There is a pain that cuts deep into the bone, a sense of guilt and loss that lingered even as I closed its pages.
Chee’s prose is stunning. Exquisite, spellbinding, and lyrical, it’s a feast for the senses. Each sentence is crafted with such beauty that’s contrasted with the hideousness that intrudes on the pages. His writing feels perfectly balanced and finds that just-right medium of not being overly purple or overly sparse. It amazes me that there are people with this much talent in the world. I’m in awe.
Some trigger warnings for this book are pedophilia/sexual abuse, self harm, suicide, and suicidal ideation. I recommend taking breaks in between reads and of course, self-care. But even with the deeply uncomfortable topics it treads on, I highly highly highly recommend this book.
I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but the novel centers around Fee, a twelve year old boy who is sexually abused by his choir director. Calling this book “sad� feels incorrect; rather it instilled in me a deep, unsettling melancholy. There is a pain that cuts deep into the bone, a sense of guilt and loss that lingered even as I closed its pages.
Chee’s prose is stunning. Exquisite, spellbinding, and lyrical, it’s a feast for the senses. Each sentence is crafted with such beauty that’s contrasted with the hideousness that intrudes on the pages. His writing feels perfectly balanced and finds that just-right medium of not being overly purple or overly sparse. It amazes me that there are people with this much talent in the world. I’m in awe.
Some trigger warnings for this book are pedophilia/sexual abuse, self harm, suicide, and suicidal ideation. I recommend taking breaks in between reads and of course, self-care. But even with the deeply uncomfortable topics it treads on, I highly highly highly recommend this book.
January 7, 2011
really just masterfully written; some of the smoothest prose i've ever read. a couple interesting structural choices that he totally pulls off, too. plus a cover that's made out of some kind of texturally addictive material i can't stop touching! best of all possible worlds...
May 1, 2012
Poetic and deeply, deeply sad...not sure I have it in me to write about this one. I'll just say this: the past has the ability to haunt, and always seems to catch up to the people who most want to escape it.
December 7, 2018
3.5⭐️ Beautiful writing but didn’t feel as emotionally connected as I wanted to be.
July 11, 2020
The survivor gets to tell the story. Have you figured out who survives yet?
This is an extremely unsettling and depressing book about child sexual abuse and its aftereffects, the long, ugly reach of trauma. Fee is a young choir boy when he, along with about half of his boys choir, is molested by their choir director, a man they call Big Eric. It isn't until Big Eric attempts to a molest a boy who won't go silently - Freddy Moran runs away screaming and locks himself in a room to frantically call his parents to send help - that he gets caught and put in jail. During the time of the abuse, Fee doesn't speak up and when Peter, his best friend and another victim of Big Eric, expresses even more pronounced distress over being molested, Fee begs him to not say anything. At this time, Fee is also unsure of his sexuality as he thinks he is in love with Peter, and is sexually experimenting with another boy in their choir, and another victim, Zach. For an adult reader, there are hints throughout the beginning of the story that Big Eric is a predator. At the sleep-away choir camp, he encourages everyone roam around nude, including himself, and photographs the boys when they're naked. He also encourages Fee to read about the ancient Greeks who took young boys as male lovers and expresses that he thinks it is a beautiful thing. When Eric is finally caught, Fee insists that being molested was his fault, and he begins to feel the guilt of not saying anything sooner - even though he feels periodic urges to warn someone about Big Eric's predatory nature.
After Big Eric is gone, the full weight of the trauma of sexual abuse lands on the characters, although at first this is mostly manifested through Peter. Peter begins to engage in high-risk behaviors and self-harm, and from early on we see his affinity for fire. Though Fee has some dark thoughts, the narrative at this point mainly focuses on Peter and his inability to heal from the trauma he endured. Eventually, Peter kills himself by setting himself on fire and Fee is again traumatized by Peter's death along with the knowledge that Fee silenced Peter when he wanted to speak out against Big Eric's abuse. Shortly thereafter, Zach, who Fee has continued his sort-of relationship with, also kills himself. Zach's suicide probably falls more squarely on Fee because Fee told him that he did not actually think Zach was gay, and therefore not like Fee. As Fee leaves for college bearing the weight of two friends dead and his own victimization, Fee's suicidal thoughts begin to take more shape and he more seriously considers killing himself before finally attempting to overdose on cocaine.
The third part of the book is a very abrupt and unwelcome change. The narrator changes from Fee to a teenager named Warden, who the reader later learns is Big Eric's now grown son who appeared earlier as "Baby Eddie." Warden is on his school's swim team, and the new assistant coach to the swim team is none other than Fee, who has survived into his adulthood and appears to be living a much better life than where the reader left him. Warden develops an obsession with Fee and believes he is in love with him. Through Warden's stalking, the reader also learns that Fee now has a partner named Bridey. Warden struggles with similar feelings of uncertainty about his sexuality as Fee did earlier, and when Warden calls a hotline for gay youth to panic about his desire for Fee, the operator tells him to not attempt to make any moves, understanding that the relationship between Warden and Fee can only be inappropriate. Warden's obsession makes his physically ill and he confesses to Fee more than once and though Fee initially rejects him, he is not deterred. At the end of the third part, Warden invites Fee over to the house where he is housesitting, and Fee caves and sleeps with him. The fourth part of the book is back to Fee's perspective, but begins slightly before Warden's part, so we see Fee meet Bridey, and see Fee become swim coach, and how he views the interactions with Warden that happened just before. We also see what happens after Warden's part ends - that Fee continues to meet Warden. Warden also is reconnecting with Big Eric who has just been released from prison, and on a visit to his father's home, discovers the nude photographs of the choirboys that were not found during the investigation, including the one of Fee. Warden sets the house on fire with Big Eric still inside and convinces Fee to help him run away, but Fee eventually leaves him in a hotel and calls a wellness check on him so he's taken into custody and then returns to Bridey who accepts him back.
I think this was Chee's debut novel, and it definitely has an unpolished way about it. There were profound moments, and I think the first two parts were the strongest as we grew with Fee and experienced the aftereffects of his trauma. I don't think Chee writes child characters very well, they all sound like small adults, and I know they're prep school kids but it wasn't quite believable.
This book has such a heaviness to it and I wasn't quite sure I liked the way Chee seemingly conflates homosexuality with emotional issues and misery. Fee obviously is quite a tortured soul and is suicidal in parts of the book. Peter and Zach do kill themselves, and we learn later that Freddy Moran dies of AIDS. Warden's obsession with Fee makes him physically ill as he constantly throws up and rapidly loses weight. Bridey, who is outside the sphere of Big Eric's abuse, seems to be the only gay character who isn't constantly miserable and tormented (though it seems Bridey had his own issues before).
I also really took an issue with Fee's character arc. The first two parts are chronological, so we can see the damage done to him during a vulnerable time in the formation of Fee's self and the lasting effects of the abuse in both him and Peter. His arc makes sense up until we see him from Warden's eyes. The narrative leaps at least ten years into the future and suddenly Fee is a seemingly put-together guy. The reader is robbed of seeing Fee go through any healing, which could have been the only moment of levity in the whole damn book, and instead by the end of Warden's part, Fee changes from the abused to an abuser himself. I know that theoretically, Fee and Warden together is meant to have a degree of ambiguity because Warden is seventeen and not twelve (and a quick google search informs me the age of consent in Maine is actually sixteen), but I found Chee's decision to make Fee enter into an inappropriate relationship with his student to be absolutely shocking. (I like straight up gasped!) I don't think it made any sense for Fee's character, and I know Warden looks like Peter and Fee thinks that Peter is haunting him through other blonde men Fee meets, but I simply could not understand why Fee's character arc took this turn. It was completely outside the realm of my understanding and honestly, it's what pushed this book down to a two when I had been willing to give it three.
Though this book had its moments, it derails in the middle and never gets back on track. Ultimately, it was disappointing.
June 13, 2022
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.
Read
January 9, 2024nothing like the novel coronavirus to get you to actually read the books you've checked out from the library
August 31, 2019
I really loved Edinburgh by Alexander Chee. The story of a biracial boy who, with his group of choir friends, endures extended sexual abuse, and the man he grows into as he tries to undo the grooming that shaped his developing brain, while so many of his friends do not grow up at all, this book is a thoughtful examination of what it is to try to live in the world when there is so much that has happened to you that is so formative, but also so unspoken. I think that so much of this book was done so well. The horror of abuse absolutely. The way that Eric selected those children and groomed them and convinced him that they were like him and conflated childhood sexual abuse between men and boys with queerness to further destabilize them and created envy among those that were not abused - this was all so deeply honest and real and accurate. Also, the ways that life continued on, and that families moved past events leaving their children and their pain static, and the various ways that children find to cope, particularly when communication isn’t available to them - all also true. I loved that we walked with the narrator into his teens and his adulthood, into his relationships and career, and even into a coincidence and a complication that I wasn’t sure at first that I was going to be able to accept, and that I later found essential to the story. No one was perfect here, or even close. This book was just a lot of life I’m it’s pleasant mundanity with a heavy dose of grief. Like many lives. My major complaint with this book was the buildup to a dramatic crescendo that I actually felt was unnecessary, and I wish that the story had faded out without a final event - this book was enough and then it was suddenly too much. But I think it is an essential read, and I am deeply grateful to Chee for touching on the subject of childhood sexual abuse without cutting corners and leaving out hard truths and shame - I think that this happens so much more than anyone realizes, and it needs to be included in the literary canon.
December 23, 2019
"climb out the belly of the beast," she said / "become a witness out of the abyss / the temple of the soul will have to heal the flesh / only when you're whole can you forgive." --Tori Amos, "Climb"
Alexander Chee's debut novel, *Edinburgh* (from 2001), is just about as good as any of the best novels I read this year; so I'm astonished I did not hear about it until now. Let me preface this quick review by saying it is an emotionally taxing book; I practically read pages of it through fingers across my face, even while the prose, so lovely and unflinching, softened and opened my heart.
Stories about child abuse and its legacy will naturally keep some readers at arms length, but I implore you that what this book says about the nature of bravery alone makes it worth reading. The act of reading itself can be a terribly brave thing--we readers dare to look at the darkest parts of the world and ourselves--but the rewards are infinite.
I couldn't help, while reading, thinking of the Netflix docu-series #TheKeepers, which is without exaggeration one of the best TV series I've ever seen. This led me back to Tori Amos (as many things do) and her song, "Climb," which perhaps (I've been told) is inspired by the series and the legions of children who have survived sexual molestation and abuse.
*Edinburgh* belongs among a daring cadre of stories that dare to speak power to the "unspeakables" of our lives and shatter silences. The descriptions of the character's despair are heartbreakingly rendered, yet they brought comfort to me to see such despair so tenderly humanized. I can still SEE the passages on the page in my head. I now understand Amos' line "only when you're whole can you forgive" in a new light when I think of Fee Zhe, and I'm nearly crying over it.
I'm moved, shook, and so grateful to be a reader and have these experiences. I'm a better man because of them.
Alexander Chee's debut novel, *Edinburgh* (from 2001), is just about as good as any of the best novels I read this year; so I'm astonished I did not hear about it until now. Let me preface this quick review by saying it is an emotionally taxing book; I practically read pages of it through fingers across my face, even while the prose, so lovely and unflinching, softened and opened my heart.
Stories about child abuse and its legacy will naturally keep some readers at arms length, but I implore you that what this book says about the nature of bravery alone makes it worth reading. The act of reading itself can be a terribly brave thing--we readers dare to look at the darkest parts of the world and ourselves--but the rewards are infinite.
I couldn't help, while reading, thinking of the Netflix docu-series #TheKeepers, which is without exaggeration one of the best TV series I've ever seen. This led me back to Tori Amos (as many things do) and her song, "Climb," which perhaps (I've been told) is inspired by the series and the legions of children who have survived sexual molestation and abuse.
*Edinburgh* belongs among a daring cadre of stories that dare to speak power to the "unspeakables" of our lives and shatter silences. The descriptions of the character's despair are heartbreakingly rendered, yet they brought comfort to me to see such despair so tenderly humanized. I can still SEE the passages on the page in my head. I now understand Amos' line "only when you're whole can you forgive" in a new light when I think of Fee Zhe, and I'm nearly crying over it.
I'm moved, shook, and so grateful to be a reader and have these experiences. I'm a better man because of them.
August 7, 2020
OK, so Alexander Chee can write. This we know by the end of the Prologue. He uses lyric beauty to make the horrible things he writes about even more horrible because they're beautiful. If that even makes sense. The book is divided into four acts. The prologue and first act is probably 5 out of 5 stars. The second act is pretty damn good too, maybe 4.5 stars.
But the 3rd and 4th acts felt like a stretch. Chee decides to change narrators in act 3, and I'm not entirely convinced by this new narrator's voice. Also, there's a sense of TOO much coincidence, of things in the novel being too "full-circle" by the fate of the universe. Some things felt very rushed and unconvincing in the last 2 acts, minor characters act in ways that don't make sense, and some things seemed to be written just to fulfill the poetic images set forth in the prologue, with the themes of the fox and the idea of burning. It's all very beautiful, but it goes too far in that direction I think, without adding to the believable core of the story.
Oddly, I felt like the prologue and first act could be turned into a really good graphic novel. I was picturing it sort of like that as I was reading. I loved how he tied in mythology, Greek and otherwise. The descriptions are spare but I was able to visualize it even more than most other way longer descriptions.
But the 3rd and 4th acts felt like a stretch. Chee decides to change narrators in act 3, and I'm not entirely convinced by this new narrator's voice. Also, there's a sense of TOO much coincidence, of things in the novel being too "full-circle" by the fate of the universe. Some things felt very rushed and unconvincing in the last 2 acts, minor characters act in ways that don't make sense, and some things seemed to be written just to fulfill the poetic images set forth in the prologue, with the themes of the fox and the idea of burning. It's all very beautiful, but it goes too far in that direction I think, without adding to the believable core of the story.
Oddly, I felt like the prologue and first act could be turned into a really good graphic novel. I was picturing it sort of like that as I was reading. I loved how he tied in mythology, Greek and otherwise. The descriptions are spare but I was able to visualize it even more than most other way longer descriptions.
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