Sightseeing

Sightseeing by Lapcharoensap, Rattawut. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780802117885.

Sightseeing is a debut written by a young, award-winning Thai-American writer. Set in contemporary Thailand, these stories are generous, radiant tales of family bonds, youthful romance, generational conflicts, and cultural shiftings beneath the glossy surface of a warm, Edenic setting. The stories in Sightseeing present a nation far removed from its exoticized stereotypes. In the prizewinning opening story, "Farangs," the son of a beachside motel owner commits the cardinal sin of falling for a pretty tourist, and the confrontation that ensues between the native boy and the girls American boyfriend culminates wondrously amid flying mangoes and Clint Eastwood - a pet pig - swimming out to sea. In "Sightseeing," the much-anticipated holiday of a young man about to leave for college and his loving and fiercely independent mother becomes a different kind of pilgrimage altogether when they are forced to confront the mothers impending blindness. The concluding novella, "Cockfighter," is "an astonishing coming-of-ager" (Kirkus Reviews), in which a young girl witnesses her proud fathers valiant but foolhardy battle against a local delinquent whose familys vicious stranglehold on the villagers has passed down unchecked through generations.