Exciting Times

Hardcover, 243 pages

English language

Published June 2, 2020 by Ecco.

ISBN:: 978-0-06-296874-6

(1 review)

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 moved to Hong Kong to find happiness, but so far, it isn’t working out. Since she left Dublin, she’s been spending her days teaching English to rich children—she’s been assigned the grammar classes because she lacks warmth—and her nights avoiding petulant roommates in her cramped apartment.

When Ava befriends Julian, a witty British banker, he offers a shortcut into a lavish life her meager salary could never allow. Ignoring her feminist leanings and her better instincts, Ava finds herself moving into Julian’s apartment, letting him buy her clothes, and, eventually, striking up a sexual relationship with him. When Julian’s job takes him back to London, she stays put, unsure where their relationship stands.

Enter Edith. A Hong Kong–born lawyer, striking and ambitious, Edith …

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 moved to Hong Kong to find happiness, but so far, it isn’t working out. Since she left Dublin, she’s been spending her days teaching English to rich children—she’s been assigned the grammar classes because she lacks warmth—and her nights avoiding petulant roommates in her cramped apartment.

When Ava befriends Julian, a witty British banker, he offers a shortcut into a lavish life her meager salary could never allow. Ignoring her feminist leanings and her better instincts, Ava finds herself moving into Julian’s apartment, letting him buy her clothes, and, eventually, striking up a sexual relationship with him. When Julian’s job takes him back to London, she stays put, unsure where their relationship stands.

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. Ava has been carefully pretending that Julian is nothing more than an absentee roommate, so when Julian announces that he’s returning to Hong Kong, she faces a fork in the road. Should she 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.

1 edition

ralentina reviewed Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan

2 stars

Content warning Spoilers ahead!

Ava is 22 and Irish, in Hong Kong on a TEFL job. She gets a crush on a British banker, simultaneously disgusted and charmed by his wealth and entitlement. He likes her, enjoys her company, brings her along to drinks and parties, puts her up, gives her free access to his credit card, but is not interested in being her boyfriend. While he's on a long business trip in Europe, Ava gets an even bigger crush on a Hong Kong woman lawyer. At first she dates her without telling her about him, or him about her, then she tries to be with her but keeps living with him, then she agonizes over the choice and then...spoiler alert, she probably picks him. I liked the description of bankers' expat life, and generally some snapshot of Hong Kong felt spot on. But Ava, is really too proud of being 'a weirdo', of not fitting in with the expat, of being edgy and smart and leftie. The banter got to my nerves. And the description of her coming out experience did not feel genuine - I mean, everyone is entitled to their own, but growing up in Dublin, going to university and dating a woman in Hong Kong...come on now, it could be a lot worse. I also thought the claiming of shared identity with Hong Kongers, as two people colonised by the Brits was potentially problematic, especially without addressing the fact that now Ireland is a democratic independent state, while Hong Kong is about to be swallowed by a totalitarian regime. Generally, a character's flaws don't need to be a book's flaws, but I’m afraid Naoise hasn't got enough distance from Ava to problematise these issues.

Subjects

Novel

Places

Hong Kong