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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.