LEAVE SOCIETY

Lin’s new novel blends metafiction with commentary on modern medicine, with mixed results.

As in much of Lin’s fiction, the main character here appears to be a stand-in for the author: There’s a reference to protagonist Li spending a decade “writing existential autofiction,” and at one point he sends an email to his editor about “a nonfiction book on psychedelics” that sounds not unlike Lin’s book Trip (2018). In that same email, Li writes a summary of events we read about earlier in the book—a visit to his parents in Taiwan—making this a work of autofiction that is in part about writing a work of autofiction. That isn’t the only thread running through the book, however. Li is also coping with his parents’ aging and his concern over their health, often via worrying about his father’s consumption of statins and inveighing against the toxins found in store-bought coffee. Li also spends time consuming cannabis and/or LSD, and some of the novel’s highlights come from passages that reflect a transcendent state of consciousness. “The city’s artificial lights, zooming by on cars, floating past on lamps, seemed pretty and affecting as near, teary stars.” Elsewhere, the prose can feel clunky or overly expositional—particularly an aside telling the reader that Wikipedia “aggregated the mainstream.” And a subplot about the growing relationship between Li and Kay, an editor, includes an email from Li which feels far too candid: “People used to do enemas a lot, it seems, but now they do it less, maybe due to fear of butts/poop.” Li’s interactions with his parents are unpredictable; the rest of this novel, however, feels oddly detached.

Ambitious in some places and quotidian in others.