Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Notes of a Crocodile” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

Notes of a Crocodile

Qiu Miaojin,

Bonnie Huie (Translator)

3.76 · Rating details · 1,412 ratings · 234 reviews

Set in the post-martial-law era of late 1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile depicts the coming-of-age of a group of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan's most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, Qiu Miaojin's cult classic novel is a postmodern pastiche of ...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 242 pages

Published May 2nd 2017 by NYRB Classics (first published May 11th 1994)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Notes of a Crocodile, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about Notes of a Crocodile

Lists with This Book

Anticipated Literary Reads For Readers of Color 2017

219 books — 261 voters

Last Words from Montmartre by Qiu Miaojin

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Kabi Nagata

LGBTQ literature in English translation

162 books — 29 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 3.76 ·

Rating details

· 1,412 ratings · 234 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of Notes of a Crocodile

Jan 01, 2019 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018, recs

A coming-of-age story set in Taipei during the late eighties, Notes of a Crocodile follows an eclectic bunch of queer college students as they enter their first serious relationships and come to terms with their sexuality and gender identity in a vehemently homophobic milieu. The novel, narrated by the lesbian protagonist Lazi, is divided into eight loosely chronological notebooks, each of which consists of a fast-paced series of short vignettes, diary entries, aphorisms, criticism, and letters. ...more

flag 89 likes · Like · see review

Jan 07, 2017 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it really liked it

Recommended to Jenny (Reading Envy) by: http://www.elle.com/culture/books/g29...

Shelves: read2017, reviewcopy, ebooks, around-the-world, nyrb, translated, location-china, location-taiwan

It's so interesting to be reviewing this book of lgbt fiction from Taiwan on the same day that Taiwan's top court rules in favor of gay marriage, the first place in Asia to do so. When Qiu Miaojin was alive (she committed suicide at age 26 in 1995), times were different. Being a lesbian was a bit like being a crocodile in human skin (or vice versa), or so the metaphor goes... I think. Am I the one being too literal in my metaphorical interpretation or is it really that direct?

The writing is a b ...more

flag 36 likes · Like · see review

Aug 17, 2019 Rachel rated it liked it

Shelves: east-asia, own, lgbt, in-translation, wit, 2019

An occasional pitfall of reading literature from a country other than your own is that you aren’t approaching it with the necessary cultural framework to make it comprehensible. This isn’t always the case, of course; some stories are more universal than others, and some books do a better job of contextualizing the relevant sociopolitical elements. But in Notes of a Crocodile, a book about a group of queer students in Taiwan in the late 80s, I felt desperately out of my depth, and I felt like so An occasional pitfall of reading literature from a country other than your own is that you aren’t approaching it with the necessary cultural framework to make it comprehensible. This isn’t always the case, of course; some stories are more universal than others, and some books do a better job of contextualizing the relevant sociopolitical elements. But in Notes of a Crocodile, a book about a group of queer students in Taiwan in the late 80s, I felt desperately out of my depth, and I felt like so many of my attempts to engage with this book were met with stony silence on Qiu Miaojin’s part. But I want to stress that this isn’t a fault of the book itself. I can imagine for the right reader that a book like this would be sensational. Personally I felt like I was missing references and subtleties that a Taiwanese reader (and especially a queer Taiwanese reader) would easily pick up on. I'm glad to have read this book and grappled with it as best I could, but this wasn't the easiest or most comfortable reading experience for me.

Narrated by a nameless protagonist, nicknamed Lazi, Notes of a Crocodile chronicles the trials of a group of queer students living in late 1980s Taipei. It's also punctuated by a series of interludes which imagine that the country have been invaded by humanlike crocodiles; a clear metaphor for a society that sees queerness as an epidemic. (The homophobic obsession of early 1990s Taiwanese media with homosexuality is explained in a little more detail in this LA Review of Books review by Ari Larissa Heinrich, who has translated Miaojin in the past.)

This book is light on plot, and whatever plot does happen usually happens off-page and is narrated to the reader much later; instead the focus is on the internal. To me Lazi felt more like an embodiment of what it means to be queer in Taiwan than an established character in her own right - while we learn almost nothing about her past or her personhood, pages and pages are devoted to philosophizing about what it means to be a woman who loves other women; what it means for your sexuality to be interpreted as a political statement. To me the philosophy ranged from stimulating to repetitive, occasionally too mired in intertextuality to drive any particular point home. This result is a rather rambling meditation that again, I tried to engage with - occasionally successfully, occasionally not.

My other main takeaway from this is is that I think I would have appreciated this book more if I'd read it in my early twenties; I hate to sound callous but the sheer amount of self-destruction in these pages did become tiresome after a while. This book never lets up from its relentless angst and self-absorption, and the whole thing is of course shadowed by the tragedy of Qiu Miaojin's suicide at age 26. I ultimately think this is worth a read, but I think I find Qiu Miaojin herself more intriguing than this particular book. ...more

flag 27 likes · Like · see review

Sep 13, 2017 Khashayar Mohammadi rated it liked it

Shelves: asian-lit, lgbtq

More like 3.5

I absolutely loved the bleak Romance and the endless self-loathing; BUT I DO NOT UNDERSTAND why the book was split into so many notebooks, each jumping back and forth in the story's timeline, each containing short chapters with abrupt endings and awkward transitions.

The fragmented narrative did not serve any particular purpose in the unfolding of the story, which made me question the very reason why the chapters were Pulp-fictioned together to form a patchwork novel that might have ...more

flag 19 likes · Like · see review

May 05, 2019 Inderjit Sanghera rated it it was amazing

The narrator's melancholic narrative is presented via a series of vignettes; some satirical, some epistolary, some flash-backs and some self-reflections, the narrator's incessant brooding and self-absorption can at times wear thin, with the originality of their style at times being undermined by the streak of fatalism which underlies the narrator's intense feelings of loneliness and isolation.

The narrator is a lesbian who resides in late 1980's Taipei and the novel explores her relationship with ...more

flag 11 likes · Like · see review

May 27, 2017 Jerrie (redwritinghood) rated it liked it

This book provides a very introspective look into the life of a college student who seems to suffer from depression and a lot of guilt over her sexuality. She struggles over her love for a woman who is very unreliable and is tormented by this. In the way of the very young, she can often come across as whiny or melodramatic. Still, this was an interesting look at how homosexual students in Taiwan in the late 80s dealt with societal pressures.

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

Aug 31, 2017 Subashini rated it really liked it

Shelves: gender-and-sexuality, taipei

Miaojin is able to draw on the particularities of their individual dispositions without making the impossibility of queer relationships, at that precise historical moment in Taiwan, seem like the result of mere problems with individuals. In fact, all of these unhappy queer people in love with people they can’t be with begin to add up to a problem that is more than just personal failings. “I remember back in high school, we were a bunch of misfits, always having fun. There was something going on

...more

flag 11 likes · Like · see review

May 25, 2017 Sara marked it as bailed

Shelves: owned-books

I finally ended up bailing on this one. I tried and tried again, but I think it's just not for me. Perhaps too avant garde for my taste? There were some insightful and beautiful moments, to be sure, but mostly I found it dense with melancholic introspection and weird in an unappealing way. ...more

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

Jan 23, 2018 Will Dominique rated it it was ok

Shelves: wlw, reviewed, east-asian, historical-fiction, translations, chinese, characters-protagonists-of-colour, lgbt

I guess I’m one of the few who didn’t get the appeal of this book. I found it repetitive and so boring that i had to force myself to finish it by turning off my wifi—otherwise, I kept checking my phone after every couple of paragraphs, and it seemed like it would never finish. I feel like the majority of this novel was telling instead of showing: the author literally tells readers what each character is like and what their relationship with the protagonist is like (“to me, she was [adjective]”, I guess I’m one of the few who didn’t get the appeal of this book. I found it repetitive and so boring that i had to force myself to finish it by turning off my wifi—otherwise, I kept checking my phone after every couple of paragraphs, and it seemed like it would never finish. I feel like the majority of this novel was telling instead of showing: the author literally tells readers what each character is like and what their relationship with the protagonist is like (“to me, she was [adjective]”, “she was [convoluted or tedious metaphor]”, over and OVER again), and while Miaojin shows snippets of interactions, they are so brief, out of context, and jarring that it feels like there is no live development of any relationships. I feel like I just listened to a 3 hour lecture at school about someone’s personal life whom I didn’t really care about. I had been interested by the blurb, but 75% of the way through the book, I was STILL legitimately waiting to meet the characters it was supposedly about; I was honestly shocked when I realized whom they had been this whole time, as I did /not/ get any sort of impression from most of the characters. This could be due to the translation, maybe; I feel like many of my issues stemmed from the language being unnecessarily wordy and unclear. Like, me not realizing two of the main characters are lesbians until Lazi finally goes and point-blank says “they were in love” seems like a failure to convey a pretty essential aspect of characterization. I did wonder, but I feel like I waited for too long (basically until their last appearances) for that reaffirmation. Same thing goes for Lazi’s self-harm; I honest to god thought all this “burning” was metaphorical and her just being melodramatically “poetic”. This went on even after she talked about her “wounds” and when this guy yelled, “You have to stop hurting yourself!” I thought it was spiritual/emotional because it’s NEVER clear that she’s actually holding a damn lighter or match or any physical object. Lazi never really feels like she occupies physical space; she ends up at different places, in different times, with different people, and it all jumps around without much transition.

At one point, I thought this might be what it would be like if John Green tried to write a lesbian teen angst story for adults. Shfjksjfk

Another thing i noticed is not a single character uses the word “queer” in the entire manuscript, yet apparently (according to the blurb) they’re all queer. Hmm. ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Jan 13, 2019 David rated it it was amazing

Shelves: big-white-square

This was incredibly sad.

I read it twice.

Bits:
"Those wrenching eyes, which could lift up the entire skeleton of my being. How I longed for myself to be subsumed into the ocean of her eyes. How the desire, once awakened, would come to scald me at every turn. The scarlet mark of sin and my deep-seated fear of abandonment had given way to the ocean's yearning."

"If we'd been playing it cool like a pair of thieves, it was because our grand heist was drawing near. I anticipated, I schemed, I fretted. I ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Jul 28, 2018 Jo rated it liked it

I think this is one of the books where I can appreciate a lot about it but not necessarily enjoy it although up until Laxi’s relationship with Xiao Fan I was relatively engaged. If this was a novel written in the U.S. or U.K set 2018, the obsessive and self-destructive behavior around relationships by a group of college kids would probably have driven me nuts although I am aware that when I was that age, I probably channeled elements of this at one time or another.

What elevates it though is the I think this is one of the books where I can appreciate a lot about it but not necessarily enjoy it although up until Laxi’s relationship with Xiao Fan I was relatively engaged. If this was a novel written in the U.S. or U.K set 2018, the obsessive and self-destructive behavior around relationships by a group of college kids would probably have driven me nuts although I am aware that when I was that age, I probably channeled elements of this at one time or another.

What elevates it though is the fact these are characters coming to terms with their sexuality at a time when being queer was not generally accepted or understood - although I understand that Taiwan is now one of the most progressive countries in Asia regarding LGBTQ rights. Qiu Miaojin uses the symbol of a crocodile, dressing up in human skin to convey this idea of queerness as something other, as something to be hidden and for others to be both scared and perversely fascinated by. It works as a symbol but still the sections of the book that focused on this were often confusing and interrupted the flow of the overall narrative.

The novel shows how the society of the time was regimented and had high expectations and definitions of success that put further pressure on young people. College gave them the space and distance to shy away from expectations while at the same time leaving them rootless without support or purpose. Shiu Ling makes the remark that while at high school she had several close friends, in her college life she is surrounded by people but has never been so lonely while Laxi locks herself away in an array of different apartments and sleeps to stop from feeling.

Laxi’s relationship with Shui Ling is full of quiet drama and seems to be torture for them both but that with Xiao Fan just becomes endless dialogue rehashing the same points in slightly different ways and I found myself not caring. I cared far more about the friendships Laxi had with Meng Sheng and Chu Kuang, Tun Tun and Zhi Rou which didn’t lead to such self-destructive, apathetic behavior which often felt suffocating to read.

Having said all this, I’m glad I read this as a window in to what it was like to be queer and young in this time and place and I think if she’d lived longer Qiu Miaojin would have been an interesting writer to watch. As it is, it’s hard to read the novel without the awareness of this young author in your mind and therefore see much of it as sadly autobiographical.
...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Jul 08, 2018 Melanie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book told in 8 notebooks is very reminiscent of the diary of a teenager. Full of angst, frustration, infatuations, self-doubt, exhiliration, downcast moods. Lazi, a Taiwanese teenager/young adult, finds that she is attracted to women, not that easy in 1989 Taiwan. Yet at the same time, her being a lesbian does not make this a difficult coming out story, as someone else in the Read Around the World Book Club said, Lazi happens to be a lesbian, but it is not her only defining characteristic. ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Jan 20, 2018 Anna rated it liked it

Shelves: sexuality, fiction, chinese-lit

I picked this novel up at random in the library, knowing nothing about it beyond the blurb. Having read it, I wish there had been an afterword to tell me more about the author and cultural context in which it was written. Without that, I found it atmospheric yet oblique. The format is of a diary or set of reflections written by Lazi, a emotionally turbulent and self-destructive undergraduate student. She’s attracted to women and troubled by it, as her social milieu is implied to be very homophob I picked this novel up at random in the library, knowing nothing about it beyond the blurb. Having read it, I wish there had been an afterword to tell me more about the author and cultural context in which it was written. Without that, I found it atmospheric yet oblique. The format is of a diary or set of reflections written by Lazi, a emotionally turbulent and self-destructive undergraduate student. She’s attracted to women and troubled by it, as her social milieu is implied to be very homophobic. Her friendships and romantic entanglements are all terribly overwrought, which reminded me of the emotional dramas I observed during my own undergraduate years. The chaotic nature of all this drama can become a bit wearing, though. I wanted more context for it, as I have no idea about what late 1980s Taiwan was like. My favourite element of the book was the interjection of allegorical chapters about a crocodile, clearly a metaphor for being queer. These were slyly witty, implying a voyeuristic fascination with and fear of LGBTQ people in popular culture:

From the standpoint of developmental psychologists, crocodiles were an aberrant species. In accordance with their discipline’s understanding of crocodile families, their research indicated distinct differences from humans at every stage of development from birth to puberty as well as in maturity, though details had yet to be ascertained. There was a general consensus, however, that up the age of fourteen, crocodiles a homemade ‘human suit’ before running away from home. While exact causes remained unknown, scholars cited societal attitudes as a factor in crocodile mutation, suggesting that there was no means of preventing an increase in the number of emergent crocodiles, which would ultimately contribute to a broader societal trend toward a full-fledged crocodile ecology and genetic mutation.

Such deadpan chapters provide a striking contrast the very messy reality of Lazi’s life and those of her friends. The three stars I’m giving ‘Notes of a Crocodile’ reflect a lack of contextual knowledge on the part of the reader, rather than the book as such. A translator’s note, or similar, would have been very helpful. ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Jan 29, 2018 Sharanya Subramaniam added it

Shelves: to-be-read-again

Trigger warning: Depression.

Well, there are some books that leave an indelible mark on our souls. This is one of those books. It will latch onto your memory and appear nonchalantly throughout your life, to remind you how it made you feel. The raw emotions in this book are just so... hard to digest. Hits you in the gut and kicks you hard, even after you have collapsed.

The story is set in Taiwan in the 1990s, where being queer was still frowned upon. The book describes the story of an unnamed na ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Sep 19, 2017 CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, east-asian, queer, reading-in-colour, own, lesbian

A melancholic, introspective, dark book about being a queer new adult in 1990s Taipei. It reminded me of THE BELL JAR but also Oscar Wilde. Reading it was a bit like jumping back into grad school. This is a complex, fascinating book ripe for interpretation and historical/cultural analysis. It's the kind of book that I think would grow on me more if I got to talk about it with other lit nerds and if I had a teacher to situate it in its context. But I can appreciate it for what it is, even if it d ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Sep 29, 2019 Sookie rated it really liked it

Shelves: literary-fiction, translated

Notes of a crocodile isn't just innovative in exploring sexuality but influential in its own regards. Its incredibly sad how the author committed suicide at a very young age of twenty-six.

Set in late eighties, the protagonist Lazi, is a bit self obsessed, mildly depressed, confused and is riding wave of late teen angst. The narrator begins at the start of their college days where she finds a senior attractive. The story moves from there, readers delving into her psyche as she goes about her ado ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

May 02, 2017 Deborah rated it really liked it

Shelves: edelweiss, own, works-in-translation

Those who follow my reviews know that translated fiction is one of my obsessions, so I was delighted to discover NYRB's reissue of the Taiwanese cult classic of queer literature, Notes of a Crocodile. Described by its translator Bonnie Huie as a "survival manual for teenagers, for a certain age when reading the right book can save your life," Notes of a Crocodile nevertheless has much to offer adults, particularly those who are cisgendered.

I must confess to being confused by the book's structure Those who follow my reviews know that translated fiction is one of my obsessions, so I was delighted to discover NYRB's reissue of the Taiwanese cult classic of queer literature, Notes of a Crocodile. Described by its translator Bonnie Huie as a "survival manual for teenagers, for a certain age when reading the right book can save your life," Notes of a Crocodile nevertheless has much to offer adults, particularly those who are cisgendered.

I must confess to being confused by the book's structure for a large chunk of its relatively modest length. Qiu Miaojin moves back and forth between two narratives, with their only connection being thematic. The first story is the one I was expecting from the publisher's description: that of "the coming-of-age of a group of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan's most prestigious university." The second story provides the novel's title: a crocodile wearing a human suit, à la the dinosaurs in Eric Garcia's Anonymous Rex series, muses on how people vehemently advocate both for and against crocodiles, despite knowing nothing about them and not even realizing that at least one crocodile lives and works among them. At the risk of stating the obvious, the common theme is separation, isolation, and the tendency of some people to make authoritative statements about a group whose experiences they do not share:

In the final analysis, our knowledge and understanding of crocodiles is but a microorganism on a fingernail. But in the customary practice of advanced nations, we will safeguard information within the grip of our metal jaws, holding on as if our lives depended on it.

Sound familiar?

Notes of a Crocodile concludes with a message which should be emblazoned on the blackboard in every classroom in the world, from preschool to university:

The deeper you love, the deeper your compassion grows and the more you realize that the other suffers just as you do. When all is said and done, human civilization is ugly and cruel, and the only thing to do is to raze it to the ground so it becomes visible that kindredness is the one true constant in relationships.

Just imagine the world that might result.

This review was based on a free ARC provided by the publisher. ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Jun 12, 2018 A rated it it was amazing

Shelves: adult-fiction, legbet, favorites, pretty-covers

This is the most realistic book I’ve ever read. Not because of the things the characters do, though those were also believable, but because the main character’s thought process almost exactly maps a real person’s train of thought. People don’t think in one direction — they loop back on themselves, dwell on things that are objectively meaningless, change their minds constantly, and layer their perceptions with memories of things they’ve done, seen, heard, and read. Lazi thought this way; she join ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

May 29, 2017 Morgan rated it liked it

Ahhhhh this book was affecting but almost unrelenting in its self-hatred. i'm not sure i needed to revisit what it felt like to be a depressed, self-harming almost-teen but this book certainly gave that in spades. i liked it and was engrossed, but it was more like something i just had to get through. ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Feb 26, 2015 David rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Books like this make me thankful that I read Chinese. My gods, the metaphors, the flow, the emotions, and the perceptiveness - I really can't believe Qiu wrote this when she was in college. ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jun 19, 2020 Josh Friedlander rated it liked it

Shelves: nyrb, existentialist, queer, translated-fiction, pomo, depressive-realism

An intense 90s vibe - angry, grungy, alienated - pervades this (actually late-80s-set) tale of love between women in Taiwan. (The republic became the first Asian country to legalise same-sex marriage last year.) It is told in a series of "diaries", out-of-order, introducing an underworld of gifted but unhappy and self-destructive characters. There are multiple nods to European influences such as Schopenhauer, Genet and the Nouvelle Vague. While it's obvious what the titular crocodiles represent, ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jul 22, 2020 Denise rated it liked it

Shelves: read-2020, own

Set in Taipei in the late 1980s and told in a succession of notebooks, this coming-of-age story following a group of queer college students is a book I tried so, so hard to love - but I just couldn't connect with it. Oh, the anguish. The self-loathing and self-destructive behaviour. The endless amount of painfully overwrought metaphors. After a while, I just wanted it to end. Another candidate for the "I wanted to like this more than I did" category. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Dec 02, 2020 Jo-Ann Huynh rated it really liked it

this was suuuuper indulgent. so wracked with emotion and angst and wanting-but-not-letting-themselves-have and at times the melodrama was lowkey unbearable lol. but that’s how it actually is, and you gotta love a story about a bunch of lovelorn gaysian kids trying to figure their shit out, falling apart and coming back together because... love. love!

now... “why don’t you go love a little!” 😤😤😤

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jun 18, 2017 tortoise dreams rated it really liked it

A young lesbian comes of age in puritan 1980's Taiwan.

Book Review: Notes of a Crocodile is one of a kind, sui generis, and isn't easily described. Our protagonist says it's about "getting a diploma and writing." No, it's not. This posthumous novel covers friendship, university life, emotions, relationships, misfits, literature, homosexuality, emotions, and crocodiles, all occurring in a small, almost claustrophobic orbit. I can't remember the last book that drew me in so completely; every time I A young lesbian comes of age in puritan 1980's Taiwan.

Book Review: Notes of a Crocodile is one of a kind, sui generis, and isn't easily described. Our protagonist says it's about "getting a diploma and writing." No, it's not. This posthumous novel covers friendship, university life, emotions, relationships, misfits, literature, homosexuality, emotions, and crocodiles, all occurring in a small, almost claustrophobic orbit. I can't remember the last book that drew me in so completely; every time I put it down the story kept spinning in my mind until I picked it up again. It's a powerful story.

The narrative is told in a series of school notebooks by our 18 year-old heroine, trying to push her way through youth, sexuality, and love, overthinking, over-intellectualizing, feeling emotions too deeply, being too proud or not proud enough, all the snares of youth. What we do when caught in our first loves. The chapters are periodically interspersed with more surreal and metaphorical short chapters about the crocodiles that invisibly live among us; these chapters provided some needed balance.

Notes of a Crocodile is influenced by Haruki Murakami, who is referenced several times, including his novel Norwegian Wood, by name. But the novel isn't plagiarism or parody; Qiu has made Murakami's style her own. There is the adored female love interest, the somewhat jerky male friend, the almost perfect female friend, the character who runs a bar, references to western literature and music. I don't remember a cat. I think Qiu even teases Murakami a bit when a character says, "Women are beautiful and mysterious, aren't they?"

The one flaw for some readers will be that our protagonist seems to dwell, even wallow in the miseries of her situation, becoming something of a drama teen. The anguish, though well-written, can go on for pages. At times she seems to want to prolong and go deeper into her agonies, rather than try to work through or past them. But while noticeable, I also think it's understandable when one feels unique, separate, rejected, isolated. That's what we do when first exploring love. That's what youth and difference are about. What the drama teen doesn't realize is that we are all (subject to parental perversions, self-doubts, voices in our heads) just putting forth different efforts to appear normal. Some, like our protagonist, make little effort. Although the reader may want to tell the characters to move on with their lives, Qiu accurately captures the turmoil and meltdowns of love, betrayal, and youth. And captures and captures and captures ... for some it will be intense, for others repetitive.

On the other hand, it is beautifully written, with amazing metaphors and concepts, well translated by Bonnie Huie. There were a few points when I wondered if lines were perfectly translated, but given how fantastically difficult Notes of a Crocodile must've been to translate, I'm an ass for even mentioning it. A powerful book that I found easy to identify with and difficult to stop reading. The most compelling book I've read in a long time. [4½★] ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Feb 26, 2018 Emily Yang rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: in-translation, fiction, favorites

rereading this 4 years later—half a year after graduating college, & a few days after pride just took place in Taiwan!—in the original Mandarin felt momentous. i'm so fucking grateful!!! what read as wonderfully oblique in English is so much more emotionally & intellectually legible to me in Taiwanese Mandarin. some vignettes deliciously snag at the best snippets of college life, like running into a friend you don't see much but always bump hearts with when you meet, or pausing to look up at the rereading this 4 years later—half a year after graduating college, & a few days after pride just took place in Taiwan!—in the original Mandarin felt momentous. i'm so fucking grateful!!! what read as wonderfully oblique in English is so much more emotionally & intellectually legible to me in Taiwanese Mandarin. some vignettes deliciously snag at the best snippets of college life, like running into a friend you don't see much but always bump hearts with when you meet, or pausing to look up at the sky in a particular moment & swearing to yourself you won't forget the sight (but, invariably, you do). others make you feel like you're at a sleepover with a close friend with whom you have a sapphic dynamic, pingponging big ideas & small feelings at each other with playful care. & then there's the self-loathing, the way life & death are so deeply implicated by love & desire & none of the characters can disentangle themselves from the convoluted man-woven web we call,, gender ,,. there's a throbbingly nonbinary, anti-gender resonance throughout that i don't entirely think the translation did justice (or maybe i was just a less discerning reader then). this is a series of notebooks full of the most emotional moments of a very emotional person's life. that's so good??

loving someone & letting yourself be loved is so hard! that's the sad shout at the core of this novel. it's not afraid of making hasty proclamations about the nature of love, desire, love-desire, life, cruelty, et cetera. it's melodramatic glut through & through, punctuated by a distinctly Taiwanese levity, & then the amazing introspection / generalizing slant of the diary format. there's so much precocity embedded here: a refusal to become human, the way the allegory snuggles up against & then trades seats with the real, the abstract filmic ekphrasis that places the book itself in scene at the end, an understanding that ownership kills beauty & vitality, a radical resistance to being pinned down. grrr i love u Chiu Miao-chin i hope u are at rest. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jun 26, 2019 Jennifer rated it really liked it

Shelves: lgbtqi, earrings, fiction, owned, translated, women-in-translation

I'd never heard of this book before, but bought it based on NYRB classics, translated fiction, queer misfits, and I don't think I've read any authors from Taiwan before. Plus this cover is just fantastic. Still, I had very little in the way of expectations going in.

Now I am struggling to find a way to talk about it. Central to the story is the narrator, known to us only by the nickname Lazi, and her on-again off-again love with Shui Ling. Told from excerpts from ten notebooks Lazi wrote over a p ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

May 05, 2017 Kevin Adams rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nyrb

As you may have seen from my Goodreads list, I am drawn to the releases by the New York Review Books. What I'm drawn to is the history and unique stories they tell. Some from years ago some from decades ago. Each of the books is unique in its own way and I've never read anything like Notes Of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin. Written in the early 1990's and taking place in in Taipei in the mid to late 1980's, it's the most timely and timeless piece of writing I've ever read. From its devastating hones ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jul 31, 2017 rosamund rated it it was ok

Shelves: lgbt, affectionate-bluestockings

The narrative style of this book is very modern: it is self-referential, satirical and elliptical; but its approach to lesbianism is not. Lazi, the main character, has always known she is a lesbian, but in the repressive world of late 1980s Taiwan, she hates herself and is drawn into depression and despair. I applaud the book for its honest account of these feelings, but it's hard to tell whether the narrative condemns society, for making Lazi feel this way, or condemns Lazi, for being gay. Beca ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Aug 03, 2017 kirsten rated it it was amazing

Well, shit. Who knew that early 1990s Taipei was the same as late 1990s Ozarks? If you know me, you know that means, the book is about that struggle with identity/feelings/lust and trying to find a way to understand/name/believe/forget/etc. If you want to feel how oppressive (even with a group of friends/allies) the world can be growing up gay in a homophobic society, read this book. Thankfully, I left the Ozarks and so have been living happily gay ever since.

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jul 17, 2018 tatterpunk rated it really liked it

Shelves: suicide, chinese-semester, queer-as-in-fuck-you

I didn't accept myself. There was no curing the me that had come forth. I'd ingested the poison long ago, and its origins were in the whole of humanity, who'd infected me with their collective chorus. Before I could ever reveal the real me, first I had to remove the label on me that read NEGATED, and tear it up.

FOUR STARS, aka, "will definitely read again."

This book made me feel a lot of things. Not all of them good things.

... I'll be honest, most of them not-good things: frustration, anger, ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
NYRB Classics: Notes of a Crocodile, by Qiu Miaojin	1	22	Jan 30, 2017 12:51PM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Fiction

124 users

LGBT

92 users

GLBT > Queer

64 users

Classics

31 users

Cultural > Asia

24 users

Cultural > China

22 users

Novels

16 users

Literary Fiction

16 users

Adult

13 users

Literature

12 users

See top shelves…

About Qiu Miaojin

Qiu Miaojin

83 followers

Qiu Miaojin (1969–1995) was one of Taiwan’s most innovative literary modernists, and the country’s most renowned lesbian writer. Her first published story, “Prisoner,” received the Central Daily News Short Story Prize, and her novella Lonely Crowds won the United Literature Association Award. While attending graduate school in Paris, she directed a thirty-minute film called Ghost Carnival, and not ...more