Review: Naoise Dolan's Exciting Times.

Posted by: jacobballew

A Review of Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times (Ecco, 2020).

 

 

  

At Asian American Literature Fans, we’ve been thinking about some site revamps in light of so much going on in the world. At this time, we’re going to continue to review Asian American literature but also include more offerings from other writers, who may not identify as Asian American. As part of this trend, I offer you a review of Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times. I was alerted to this title and immediately wrote a colleague (who works in Irish postcolonial studies) about a reviewer’s tagline, which references both Kevin Kwan and Sally Rooney. So, you know, of course had to read this novel! In any case, let’s let the marketing description get us off the ground: “An intimate, bracingly intelligent debut novel about a millennial Irish expat who becomes entangled in a love triangle with a male banker and a female lawyer Ava, newly arrived in Hong Kong from Dublin, spends her days teaching English to rich children. Julian is a banker. A banker who likes to spend money on Ava, to have sex and discuss fluctuating currencies with her. But when she asks whether he loves her, he cannot say more than ‘I like you a great deal.’ Enter Edith. A Hong Kong–born lawyer, striking and ambitious, Edith takes Ava to the theater and leaves her tulips in the hallway. Ava wants to be her—and wants her.  And then Julian writes to tell Ava he is coming back to Hong Kong... Should Ava return to the easy compatibility of her life with Julian or take a leap into the unknown with Edith? Politically alert, heartbreakingly raw, and dryly funny, Exciting Times is thrillingly attuned to the great freedoms and greater uncertainties of modern love. In stylish, uncluttered prose, Naoise Dolan dissects the personal and financial transactions that make up a life—and announces herself as a singular new voice.” The connection to Sally Rooney is apt insofar as the novel treads similar ground as Rooney’s Conversations with Friends. Both novels have at their center a dysfunctional and stormy relationship. In Dolan’s case, the relationship between Julian and Ava is complicated to say the least, especially as Julian refuses to label their connection. This kind of limbo space becomes ever more tendentious once Julian leaves for a long work trip, and Ava meets Edith. What the novel does so brilliantly well is to give us a protagonist who often believes she knows more than she does. At the same time, Dolan’s incredible ability to mine and to allow us into Ava’s psychological interiority gives us a robust sense of her motivations. The other element well worth noting is the backstory of Ava’s time in Hong Kong. There are snippets of her teaching English language lessons to young students, and it becomes clear that this job, while certainly fulfilling in some ways, is not pushing Ava in others. Ava, who seems so curious and observant, finds her match in someone like Edith. In this sense, the novel begins to gather more solidity with their relationship. What Dolan is also able to achieve so well is the turbulent undercurrents of an interracial relationship, as Ava must navigate how to deal with Edith being in the closet. The novel is eminently readable and ends on a logical romantic note, which I thus found fulfilling, certainly so in these dark, pandemic times. (There is a moment when Ava, having caught a cold, wears a mask)!

 

Buy the Book Here:

 

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/exciting-times-naoise-dolan

 

 

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