"This is probably the only novel I would ever describe as 'flawless.' The writing is absolutely gorgeous, and Chee writes from a place of deep insight and reflection. Skirting fiction and memoir, he chronicles the life and recovery of a young Korean-American sexual abuse survivor. Perhaps because he's drawing from his own history with abuse and survival, he is able to give voice to the crushing totality of trauma in a way that few authors are able to accomplish. What struck me most while reading this novel was Chee's ability to name the feelings that so often remain nameless, and to date no novel has affected me as powerfully as Edinburgh."
"This is a beautifully written book.
It is worth your money and your time."
Publisher Mariner Books
Publication Date 2016-11-01
Section Fiction / All Staff Suggestions / Fiction Suggestions / Melissa S. / Archived Staff Suggestions / Mike C.
Format Paperback
ISBN 9780544916128
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
Winner of the James Michener/Copernicus Society Fellowship Prize
Lambda Literary Foundation Editor’s Choice Award
“[Chee] says volumes with just a few incendiary words.” —New York Times
“Arresting . . . profound and poetic . . . Chee’s voice is worth listening to.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Alexander Chee gets my vote for the best new novelist I’ve read in some time. Edinburgh is moody, dramatic—and pure.” —Edmund White
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. But when Fee learns how the director treats his section leaders, he is so ashamed he says nothing of the abuse, not even when Peter, his best friend, is in line to be next. When the director is arrested, Fee tries to forgive himself for his silence. But when Peter takes his own life, 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. Told with “the force of a dream and the heft of a life,”* Edinburgh marked Chee “as a major talent whose career will bear watching” (Publishers Weekly).
“A coming-of-age tale 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
