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Notes of a Crocodile
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 diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and countercultural icon.
Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover, as well as a bored, mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend.
Illustrating a process of liberation from the strictures of gender through radical self-inquiry, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature.
Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover, as well as a bored, mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend.
Illustrating a process of liberation from the strictures of gender through radical self-inquiry, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature.
242 pages, Paperback
First published May 11, 1994
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About the author
Qiu Miaojin
7 books313 followersQiu 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 long after this, at the age of twenty-six, she committed suicide. The posthumous publications of her novels Last Words from Montmartre and Notes of a Crocodile (forthcoming from NYRB Classics) made her into one of the most revered countercultural icons in Chinese letters.
NYRB Classics newsletter - 5/21-20114
- Mr Nicolello
NYRB Classics newsletter - 5/21-20114
- Mr Nicolello
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,899 reviews
August 19, 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 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.
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.
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June 7, 20216/6/2021
Had a great time discussing this with my book club. Miaojin's ability to create such a fleshed out character as Lazi is really remarkable, and I'm looking forward to giving this another read in the future :).
6/5/2021
Reading this for my classics book club on Patreon :).
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Had a great time discussing this with my book club. Miaojin's ability to create such a fleshed out character as Lazi is really remarkable, and I'm looking forward to giving this another read in the future :).
6/5/2021
Reading this for my classics book club on Patreon :).
You can find me on
Youtube | Instagram | Twitter | Tumblr | Website | The Storygraph
November 28, 2024
this book beat me up like those toddlers did when they whacked the shit out of lois griffin in a supermarket.
December 10, 2022
if i’m being really and truly honest i don’t think i’m mentally stable enough to have experienced this book in a way that wasnt some form of self h*rm so do with that what u will
May 24, 2017
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 bit piecemeal, collected in notebooks, some longing for a woman who can't ever be hers, some reflecting on the crocodiles that are ostracized yet find each other, reportedly seen and then gather in bars (it gets a little weird.) Other parts wax so beautifully about the love interest that I felt I was reading one of Jeanette Winterson's earlier works like Written on the Body.
Thanks to the publisher for access to a copy through Edelweiss.
The writing is a bit piecemeal, collected in notebooks, some longing for a woman who can't ever be hers, some reflecting on the crocodiles that are ostracized yet find each other, reportedly seen and then gather in bars (it gets a little weird.) Other parts wax so beautifully about the love interest that I felt I was reading one of Jeanette Winterson's earlier works like Written on the Body.
Thanks to the publisher for access to a copy through Edelweiss.
May 11, 2023
I can appreciate the representation this book provided given its publication date of May 11, 1994. Lots of gay mess going on in this novel about a group of queer university students studying at a prestigious university in Taiwan. While the novel felt honest and uncensored, I didn’t love the plot – there’s a lot of unhealthy and obsessive relationships, yearning and yearning and more yearning, and self-destruction. While I resonate with the rawness of this book’s narrative, I didn’t feel much depth or growth from its characters. There’s also some pretty nasty mentions of violence toward women that I’m not sure served too much of a point. If you’re interested in a dark, nonlinear queer read, maybe check this one out, though I don’t highly recommend it.
May 5, 2021
4/5stars
Very relatable for people in their early 20s with no direction, I loved reading about queer people in a non-western country and the emotions/conversations that come with that, the writing was beautiful and i have so many lighted quotes, very well done.
Very relatable for people in their early 20s with no direction, I loved reading about queer people in a non-western country and the emotions/conversations that come with that, the writing was beautiful and i have so many lighted quotes, very well done.
August 27, 2021
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On the one hand, this was certainly ahead of its time, on the other, I found Qiu Miaojin's brand of angsty nihilism somewhat trite.
Originally published in 1994, Notes of a Crocodile is now considered by many a ‘cult classic’. I was certainly surprised and struck by Miaojin's modernist style and by how on point her discussions surrounding gender, identity, and sexuality were.
In many ways the narrator’s inner conflict regarding her sexuality, desire, and otherness brought to mind Giovanni's Room, but Miaojin's storytelling is far more experimental and uneven than James Baldwin’s one. Notes of a Crocodile's unconventional structure, while certainly unique, does come at the expense of its characters, plot, and story. While I was reading this I couldn’t help but be reminded of Mieko Kawakami's Breasts and Eggs, a novel of hers I did not particularly care for (heaven is so much better in my humble opinion).
Similarly to Breasts and Eggs, Notes of a Crocodile, which is set in 1980s Taipei, seems to be made up of vignettes, many of them featuring one-note secondary characters going on long tangents or monologues in which they vent or harp on about their vices, how existing in a society sucks, how love will inevitably end in pain and violence.
Their voices, more often than not, struck me as exceedingly self-dramatising. They try really hard to paint themselves as these edgy, grungy, tragic figures who are more cottoned on than the rest on the ills of the world. I just found their neverending speeches to be angsty, puerile even. I also kept mixing up some of the characters as they do seem to express themselves very similarly to one another, which was weird given that our narrator when reflecting on her ‘friends’, would attribute to them distinctive characteristics (which they themselves never show). Speaking of, these 'interactions', which make up most of the narrative, are very repetitive. They usually feature our main character and one other person, and, personally, I would like for the characters to interact more with each other (as opposed to having all of these 1-to-1). It didn’t help that I found them all extremely unlikeable and inconsistent (and not in the, they are human, of course they have incongruent, kind of way). The main narrator, nicknamed Lazi, is horrible. While I could definitely sympathise with her struggles (although it is not clearly stated, she likely suffers from depression, often finding the idea of performing everyday activities overwhelming), I just hated the way she treated the woman she was supposedly in love with. Talk about being manipulative! And, at the risk of using an overused word, nearly every single character in this was toxic af (on the lines of: i will beat the shit out of you because i hate that i love you'...).
Lazi’s pessimistic monologues did little for me. They don’t really add anything to her character that we didn’t already know, nor do they offer any particularly challenging or transgressive ideas.
What did keep me interested was the author’s exploration of her characters’ sexualities and gender identities. Lazi is frustrated by how binary gender identity and expression are made to be in her society. She’s also aware that, unlike more ‘feminine’ presenting lesbians, she will have a harder time ‘passing’.
In recounting Lazi’s experiences as a young lesbian woman in 1980s Taipei Miaojin also touches upon themes of normalcy, alterity, alienation, and loneliness.
Throughout the course of the novel, we hear of these ‘crocodiles’. The media seems obsessed with ‘crocodiles’, who occasionally hide themselves by wearing ‘human’ suits. These crocodiles are a metaphor for queerness, and while I appreciated Miaojin’s commentary on how queer people were perceived and treated in 1980s/90s Taiwan, by the end, this whole crocodile business did feel somewhat overdone.
Overall I have rather mixed feelings towards Notes of a Crocodile. Stylistically, well, I found this novel to be too experimental and abstract for my taste. The wannabe-anarchistic characters got on my nerves and the narrative’s tortured and fatalist tone was rather affected. Yet, I was interested in the author’s social commentary and insights into Taiwan's lgbtq+ community during the 80s. I could also definitely relate to many of her observations, speculations, and struggles with queerness. One day I may as well revisit this and find myself reassessing my estimation of this work but for the moment, yeah, I can't say that I was particularly impressed or moved by Notes of a Crocodile.
“Cruelty and mercy are one and the same. Existence in this world relegates good and evil to the exact same status. Cruelty and evil are only natural, and together they are endowed with half the power and half the utility in this world. It seems I’m going to have to learn to be crueler if I’m to become the master of my own fate.”
On the one hand, this was certainly ahead of its time, on the other, I found Qiu Miaojin's brand of angsty nihilism somewhat trite.
Originally published in 1994, Notes of a Crocodile is now considered by many a ‘cult classic’. I was certainly surprised and struck by Miaojin's modernist style and by how on point her discussions surrounding gender, identity, and sexuality were.
In many ways the narrator’s inner conflict regarding her sexuality, desire, and otherness brought to mind Giovanni's Room, but Miaojin's storytelling is far more experimental and uneven than James Baldwin’s one. Notes of a Crocodile's unconventional structure, while certainly unique, does come at the expense of its characters, plot, and story. While I was reading this I couldn’t help but be reminded of Mieko Kawakami's Breasts and Eggs, a novel of hers I did not particularly care for (heaven is so much better in my humble opinion).
Similarly to Breasts and Eggs, Notes of a Crocodile, which is set in 1980s Taipei, seems to be made up of vignettes, many of them featuring one-note secondary characters going on long tangents or monologues in which they vent or harp on about their vices, how existing in a society sucks, how love will inevitably end in pain and violence.
Their voices, more often than not, struck me as exceedingly self-dramatising. They try really hard to paint themselves as these edgy, grungy, tragic figures who are more cottoned on than the rest on the ills of the world. I just found their neverending speeches to be angsty, puerile even. I also kept mixing up some of the characters as they do seem to express themselves very similarly to one another, which was weird given that our narrator when reflecting on her ‘friends’, would attribute to them distinctive characteristics (which they themselves never show). Speaking of, these 'interactions', which make up most of the narrative, are very repetitive. They usually feature our main character and one other person, and, personally, I would like for the characters to interact more with each other (as opposed to having all of these 1-to-1). It didn’t help that I found them all extremely unlikeable and inconsistent (and not in the, they are human, of course they have incongruent, kind of way). The main narrator, nicknamed Lazi, is horrible. While I could definitely sympathise with her struggles (although it is not clearly stated, she likely suffers from depression, often finding the idea of performing everyday activities overwhelming), I just hated the way she treated the woman she was supposedly in love with. Talk about being manipulative! And, at the risk of using an overused word, nearly every single character in this was toxic af (on the lines of: i will beat the shit out of you because i hate that i love you'...).
Lazi’s pessimistic monologues did little for me. They don’t really add anything to her character that we didn’t already know, nor do they offer any particularly challenging or transgressive ideas.
What did keep me interested was the author’s exploration of her characters’ sexualities and gender identities. Lazi is frustrated by how binary gender identity and expression are made to be in her society. She’s also aware that, unlike more ‘feminine’ presenting lesbians, she will have a harder time ‘passing’.
In recounting Lazi’s experiences as a young lesbian woman in 1980s Taipei Miaojin also touches upon themes of normalcy, alterity, alienation, and loneliness.
Throughout the course of the novel, we hear of these ‘crocodiles’. The media seems obsessed with ‘crocodiles’, who occasionally hide themselves by wearing ‘human’ suits. These crocodiles are a metaphor for queerness, and while I appreciated Miaojin’s commentary on how queer people were perceived and treated in 1980s/90s Taiwan, by the end, this whole crocodile business did feel somewhat overdone.
Overall I have rather mixed feelings towards Notes of a Crocodile. Stylistically, well, I found this novel to be too experimental and abstract for my taste. The wannabe-anarchistic characters got on my nerves and the narrative’s tortured and fatalist tone was rather affected. Yet, I was interested in the author’s social commentary and insights into Taiwan's lgbtq+ community during the 80s. I could also definitely relate to many of her observations, speculations, and struggles with queerness. One day I may as well revisit this and find myself reassessing my estimation of this work but for the moment, yeah, I can't say that I was particularly impressed or moved by Notes of a Crocodile.
June 23, 2022
took me 3 months to read this. happy pride
2.5 stars, rtc
——————
as a gaysian I am legally obligated to read (and love) this gaysian classic!
2.5 stars, rtc
——————
as a gaysian I am legally obligated to read (and love) this gaysian classic!
// buddy read with cath!!
May 5, 2019
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 the variety of misfits who meander through her life, attempting to break through the barrier of ennui and aloofness which she has constructed around herself. The people she loves are more symbols of her own neuroses and obsessions rather than being relationships she develops and cultivates, their relationship being punctured by a constant series of diatribes and monologues on pain and suffering. The slight issue her, irrespective of how powerful the emotional stories which the narrator is attempting to convey are, is that if all of the relationships in the novel follows this vein, then the reader loses the ability to empathise with the emotional journeys which the characters are going through.
Yet, despite all this, Miaojin's style is jarring and startlingly original; her descriptions of Taipei range from the dour to the delirious and, not only that, but via the satirical descriptions of crocodiles which act as an allegory for the treatment of homosexuals in Taiwan, Miaojin is able to capture the experiences of individuals who were condemned to live on the fringes of society and whose existence would have otherwise remained undocumented.
A powerful and original, if at times flawed novel, the true tragedy of "Notes of a Crocodile" is that it represents the first steps of an artist who was just gaining their voice and vision before their live was tragically cut short.
The narrator is a lesbian who resides in late 1980's Taipei and the novel explores her relationship with the variety of misfits who meander through her life, attempting to break through the barrier of ennui and aloofness which she has constructed around herself. The people she loves are more symbols of her own neuroses and obsessions rather than being relationships she develops and cultivates, their relationship being punctured by a constant series of diatribes and monologues on pain and suffering. The slight issue her, irrespective of how powerful the emotional stories which the narrator is attempting to convey are, is that if all of the relationships in the novel follows this vein, then the reader loses the ability to empathise with the emotional journeys which the characters are going through.
Yet, despite all this, Miaojin's style is jarring and startlingly original; her descriptions of Taipei range from the dour to the delirious and, not only that, but via the satirical descriptions of crocodiles which act as an allegory for the treatment of homosexuals in Taiwan, Miaojin is able to capture the experiences of individuals who were condemned to live on the fringes of society and whose existence would have otherwise remained undocumented.
A powerful and original, if at times flawed novel, the true tragedy of "Notes of a Crocodile" is that it represents the first steps of an artist who was just gaining their voice and vision before their live was tragically cut short.
August 29, 2025
“𝘈 𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘴 𝘐’𝘤𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘩 - 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘹𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴, 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘺, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘮, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦…𝘢𝘵 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵, 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦. 𝘓𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘦𝘭𝘴𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺’𝘳𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘨, 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘺 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧-𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘭𝘦𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘩𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘷𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴.”
Quintessential twentysomething story with all the beats. Emotional resonance. The rush. The yearning. The aches, the questions, the not-knowing, and how to do it all.
Brings me back to a lot. All the feelings I heralded when I first moved away from home. Making sense of myself when everything stopped making sense. But this happened years ago. There’s a timely nature to the book, referring to films of the time, Betty Blue and Murakami. A chic late 90s aesthetic that reached for middle class bohemia. The avant-garde. The desire to be let live and be alive in so much uncertainty.
Heartbreaking. Rich with angst. The tossing and turning of any good heartache, dashed with resilience and realism.
Quintessential twentysomething story with all the beats. Emotional resonance. The rush. The yearning. The aches, the questions, the not-knowing, and how to do it all.
Brings me back to a lot. All the feelings I heralded when I first moved away from home. Making sense of myself when everything stopped making sense. But this happened years ago. There’s a timely nature to the book, referring to films of the time, Betty Blue and Murakami. A chic late 90s aesthetic that reached for middle class bohemia. The avant-garde. The desire to be let live and be alive in so much uncertainty.
Heartbreaking. Rich with angst. The tossing and turning of any good heartache, dashed with resilience and realism.
January 13, 2019
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 had to be prepared for a deadly siege."
"Tell me, just this once, if you still think of me. And let me recklessly, tenderly, tell you one more time: I love you."
"No matter who I was, no matter how anyone else saw me, no matter whether I knew who I was, somewhere on this planet there was someone who'd completely accept me, who'd been trying to figure me out all along, who genuinely loved me."
"My only salvation - Shui Ling - was as short-lived as a rainbow. What the two of us had was an achievement on par with landing on the moon, then floating in space with zero gravity."
"She'd been silently resisting for a while now. She wanted to avoid me, to get away from me. Meanwhile I was trailing her like a spider gliding along a thread."
"Why didn't I get it? That has to do with my own issues. Ever since I was little and started to learn what it meant to love, I never understood that I had to love me too"
"From the moment of consciousness of love was born, there was no hope of cure. And those four words - no hope of cure - encapsulate my state of suffering to this day. My condition is one that will keep me in shackles for life."
"When Gide left his wife, he told her in a parting letter, 'At your side, I have nearly rotted.'"
"I'm unworthy of loving you. I've struggled to find self-worth, but I can't expel the monster's consciousness still lurking beneath my skin."
"You opened a realm that exposed me. The deeper and harder I fell for you, the more grotesque I felt."
"Having only known unfulfilled yearnings, I thought that love was a long shot, that keeping my pride intact was a far safer bet."
"I left you, this woman, hoping I'd leave no trace of me, this monster, that our connection would disintegrate and be buried in the darkest recesses of your mind, that you'd cross back over to normality - get married, have kids - and live within the boundaries of ordinariness."
"Life is so much more complicated than I ever imagined, and nothing is as easy as it seems. We meet at the border of mutual attraction and repulsion, and between us is a row of thorns. The two of us ... have been ravaged, yet no one can walk away. Tell me, is love - along with honesty, patience, and determination - strong enough? Is it?"
"'Only healthy people are capable of being in love. Using love to treat an illness just makes the illness even worse.'"
"'I thought maybe the answer was in your heart this whole time, and you just couldn't bring yourself to say it out loud. You've been silent toward me, and all this waiting has taken its toll on me. You left me hanging with a question in my heart. Whether or not you admit it, the answer is no, right?'"
"She'd been harboring her love for me like an oyster cultivating a pearl."
"There are times when affection between family members is so deep that emotional burdens become too much to share. When the boundaries are nearly nonexistent, who has the heart to impinge on the other?"
"You punished me by waiting me wait. What was I willing to wait so long for? I waited for a breakthrough in honesty. ... I was in desperate search for some sort of connection."
"Unhealthy love is two people stoking a shared fantasy of desperate beauty, weaponizing passion and desire."
"That was why, at the core of her passion, there was fear. She had rejected love and taught herself to live without intimacy."
"Whether I live or die, I'm doomed all the same"
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 had to be prepared for a deadly siege."
"Tell me, just this once, if you still think of me. And let me recklessly, tenderly, tell you one more time: I love you."
"No matter who I was, no matter how anyone else saw me, no matter whether I knew who I was, somewhere on this planet there was someone who'd completely accept me, who'd been trying to figure me out all along, who genuinely loved me."
"My only salvation - Shui Ling - was as short-lived as a rainbow. What the two of us had was an achievement on par with landing on the moon, then floating in space with zero gravity."
"She'd been silently resisting for a while now. She wanted to avoid me, to get away from me. Meanwhile I was trailing her like a spider gliding along a thread."
"Why didn't I get it? That has to do with my own issues. Ever since I was little and started to learn what it meant to love, I never understood that I had to love me too"
"From the moment of consciousness of love was born, there was no hope of cure. And those four words - no hope of cure - encapsulate my state of suffering to this day. My condition is one that will keep me in shackles for life."
"When Gide left his wife, he told her in a parting letter, 'At your side, I have nearly rotted.'"
"I'm unworthy of loving you. I've struggled to find self-worth, but I can't expel the monster's consciousness still lurking beneath my skin."
"You opened a realm that exposed me. The deeper and harder I fell for you, the more grotesque I felt."
"Having only known unfulfilled yearnings, I thought that love was a long shot, that keeping my pride intact was a far safer bet."
"I left you, this woman, hoping I'd leave no trace of me, this monster, that our connection would disintegrate and be buried in the darkest recesses of your mind, that you'd cross back over to normality - get married, have kids - and live within the boundaries of ordinariness."
"Life is so much more complicated than I ever imagined, and nothing is as easy as it seems. We meet at the border of mutual attraction and repulsion, and between us is a row of thorns. The two of us ... have been ravaged, yet no one can walk away. Tell me, is love - along with honesty, patience, and determination - strong enough? Is it?"
"'Only healthy people are capable of being in love. Using love to treat an illness just makes the illness even worse.'"
"'I thought maybe the answer was in your heart this whole time, and you just couldn't bring yourself to say it out loud. You've been silent toward me, and all this waiting has taken its toll on me. You left me hanging with a question in my heart. Whether or not you admit it, the answer is no, right?'"
"She'd been harboring her love for me like an oyster cultivating a pearl."
"There are times when affection between family members is so deep that emotional burdens become too much to share. When the boundaries are nearly nonexistent, who has the heart to impinge on the other?"
"You punished me by waiting me wait. What was I willing to wait so long for? I waited for a breakthrough in honesty. ... I was in desperate search for some sort of connection."
"Unhealthy love is two people stoking a shared fantasy of desperate beauty, weaponizing passion and desire."
"That was why, at the core of her passion, there was fear. She had rejected love and taught herself to live without intimacy."
"Whether I live or die, I'm doomed all the same"
Currently reading
September 18, 2021I first read Notes of a Crocodile (《鱷魚手記》) more than seven years ago. I was a freshman at National Taiwan University, where this book is set and where Qiu studied, but I couldn’t remember a thing about the content of the story. Upon finding out that this book is one of the favorite books of my favorite writer, Carolina De Robertis, I knew I had to reread it sooner than I originally planned. So I ordered another copy in Chinese from Taiwan (I already own a copy, but it is at my parents’ place) and started doing that thing where I read the translated English version and the original version at the same time (I did this for Chi Ta-wei’s The Membranes; here’s my review). This is going to be very enlightening.
Currently reading it, but I’m sure I will understand a lot more of what goes on in the book than I did at 18. Review to come upon finishing it in... maybe November.
Notes: For those who don’t know, Qiu Miaojin was a Taiwanese literary lesbian icon. I went to the same high school and university as she did, 26 years apart.
Buddy reading with E.!
Currently reading it, but I’m sure I will understand a lot more of what goes on in the book than I did at 18. Review to come upon finishing it in... maybe November.
Notes: For those who don’t know, Qiu Miaojin was a Taiwanese literary lesbian icon. I went to the same high school and university as she did, 26 years apart.
Buddy reading with E.!
June 10, 2018
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.
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.
November 2, 2020
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.
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.
October 26, 2022
I decided to make a playlist of all the songs that were mentioned in this book, here it is. I liked every single song and it gave me more of a feel for the novel.
EDIT: If the link doesn't work, try to copy this in your browser: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl32QKhy3M... or type "Notes of a Crocodile braincabbage" in the YouTube search bar (braincabbage is my YouTube channel, and it's a public playlist)
My rating is probably a little rounded up from something more like 4.5 stars, because I wasn't getting into it for some time, but once I was hooked I really liked it. The narration was in a kind of vignette style of short fragments. At first I felt it was contrived, but after a while I began to enjoy these vignettes and I started to get a feel for the characters.
It reminded me a little of other gay classic literature, such as Giovanni's Room, in that this same-sex attraction often seems to be perceived as a limit, a bad habit, or a fatalistic sort of life corrupter. It makes me sad that these people were not capable of imagining a healthy, sustainable mutual love with a future, and in doing so, this pessimistic outlook on same-sex relationships often became a self-fulfilling prophecy. It seems that the author felt the same way as her characters, with the way things went for her. It's strange to think how different things were for LGBT people not too long ago. While we still have problems with a higher rate of mental illness in the community, it has become a lot better. I might not have had good luck so far in my dating life, but I never felt that a good long-term same-sex relationship was impossible. But anytime I read a queer classic, I get the sense that the societal persecution of the times has pervaded our predecessors' imaginations and sense of self-worth. Sure, remnants of that still exist. But a lot of progress has been made.
Okay, I talked very little about the book and more about what it made me think about. But I think that's part of why I liked it, that it made me think about things. All in all, I count it among my favourites and will buy Last Words from Montmartre soon.
EDIT: If the link doesn't work, try to copy this in your browser: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl32QKhy3M... or type "Notes of a Crocodile braincabbage" in the YouTube search bar (braincabbage is my YouTube channel, and it's a public playlist)
My rating is probably a little rounded up from something more like 4.5 stars, because I wasn't getting into it for some time, but once I was hooked I really liked it. The narration was in a kind of vignette style of short fragments. At first I felt it was contrived, but after a while I began to enjoy these vignettes and I started to get a feel for the characters.
It reminded me a little of other gay classic literature, such as Giovanni's Room, in that this same-sex attraction often seems to be perceived as a limit, a bad habit, or a fatalistic sort of life corrupter. It makes me sad that these people were not capable of imagining a healthy, sustainable mutual love with a future, and in doing so, this pessimistic outlook on same-sex relationships often became a self-fulfilling prophecy. It seems that the author felt the same way as her characters, with the way things went for her. It's strange to think how different things were for LGBT people not too long ago. While we still have problems with a higher rate of mental illness in the community, it has become a lot better. I might not have had good luck so far in my dating life, but I never felt that a good long-term same-sex relationship was impossible. But anytime I read a queer classic, I get the sense that the societal persecution of the times has pervaded our predecessors' imaginations and sense of self-worth. Sure, remnants of that still exist. But a lot of progress has been made.
Okay, I talked very little about the book and more about what it made me think about. But I think that's part of why I liked it, that it made me think about things. All in all, I count it among my favourites and will buy Last Words from Montmartre soon.
May 31, 2021
I really, really didn’t like this book. Agh. I feel bad about how much I disliked it, especially because it is a touchstone artifact for queer people in Asia.
I think I was projecting a specific desire onto Notes of a Crocodile. I was hungry for a different kind of writing, and when the book veered in its own direction, I struggled to accept it for what it was.
I just... didn’t like the writing. Maybe it was the translation, or the experimental nature of the novel, but I didn’t like the prose or the style. Much of the dialogue was written in paragraphs - of people talking at each other, standing on their soapboxes of misery and declaring their angst - with zero emotional beats or rhythm. Many sentences did not connect logically, which made for choppy and frustrating reading. The book was basically all “tell” and no “show.” The characters perpetuated awful, dramatic cycles of co-dependency and manipulation. The plot was nonexistent and there was no narrative arc. I appreciated and related to the depictions of self-loathing and internalized queerphobia but that was kind of the only thing that kept me trudging through the book.
1/5 :(
I think I was projecting a specific desire onto Notes of a Crocodile. I was hungry for a different kind of writing, and when the book veered in its own direction, I struggled to accept it for what it was.
I just... didn’t like the writing. Maybe it was the translation, or the experimental nature of the novel, but I didn’t like the prose or the style. Much of the dialogue was written in paragraphs - of people talking at each other, standing on their soapboxes of misery and declaring their angst - with zero emotional beats or rhythm. Many sentences did not connect logically, which made for choppy and frustrating reading. The book was basically all “tell” and no “show.” The characters perpetuated awful, dramatic cycles of co-dependency and manipulation. The plot was nonexistent and there was no narrative arc. I appreciated and related to the depictions of self-loathing and internalized queerphobia but that was kind of the only thing that kept me trudging through the book.
1/5 :(
July 14, 2022
"how full it is in bloom, this rose that grows in a wasteland."
wow wow wow. i don't even know where to start with this book. it is an anti-bildungsroman wrapped in a fictional diary punctuated by satirical vignettes that imagine crocodiles invading taiwan. "notes of a crocodile" is beautiful, annoying, tender, melodramatic, boring, painful, queer (as in political, as in queering the text, as in queer communities, as in queer love, as in new ways of being in relation). the story follows a nameless narrator (nicknamed "lazi," which later became slang for lesbian in chinese because of this book's influence) who goes to college, falls in and out and in and out of love, graduates, and upon graduation writes eight notebooks reminiscing on the past four years. lazi is self destructive and selfish. she sucks. we read four years of her destroying her own life and it is just so fucking effective. it isn't always great; sometimes characters just lecture each other about abstractions for pages on end, but it always works. no other book i've read has so perfectly nailed that specific late-teens early-twenties emotional state where every single feeling is the end of the world. i think the sentence i quoted is the thesis of the book. this book bloomed wasteland of feeling and it has thorns and it is beautiful.
"tell me, just this once, if you still think of me. and let me recklessly, tenderly, tell you one more time: I love you."
"to paint a picture of our embrace, i'd almost have to use her blood and guts."
wow wow wow. i don't even know where to start with this book. it is an anti-bildungsroman wrapped in a fictional diary punctuated by satirical vignettes that imagine crocodiles invading taiwan. "notes of a crocodile" is beautiful, annoying, tender, melodramatic, boring, painful, queer (as in political, as in queering the text, as in queer communities, as in queer love, as in new ways of being in relation). the story follows a nameless narrator (nicknamed "lazi," which later became slang for lesbian in chinese because of this book's influence) who goes to college, falls in and out and in and out of love, graduates, and upon graduation writes eight notebooks reminiscing on the past four years. lazi is self destructive and selfish. she sucks. we read four years of her destroying her own life and it is just so fucking effective. it isn't always great; sometimes characters just lecture each other about abstractions for pages on end, but it always works. no other book i've read has so perfectly nailed that specific late-teens early-twenties emotional state where every single feeling is the end of the world. i think the sentence i quoted is the thesis of the book. this book bloomed wasteland of feeling and it has thorns and it is beautiful.
"tell me, just this once, if you still think of me. and let me recklessly, tenderly, tell you one more time: I love you."
"to paint a picture of our embrace, i'd almost have to use her blood and guts."
August 5, 2022
4,5 ⭐️
‘Apuntes de un cocodrilo’ es la primera obra de la autora taiwanesa Qiu Miaojin, fue publicada en 1994, apenas un año antes de su suicidio a los veintiséis años. Absolutamente desconocida por mi hasta que me crucé con esta obra, es considerada una de las autoras más importante de la literatura lésbica del siglo XX y ya antes de ponerme a investigar sobre ella, solo con leer un par de capítulos, supe que estaba ante algo “importante” para mi vida lectora.
Esta novela, con tintes de autoficción, está organizada en forma de ocho “apuntes”, diarios, que escribe Lazi, la narradora protagonista, durante los años universitarios. A través de ellos, veremos sus vivencias y las de sus seres allegados: parejas, amistades, familiares, teniendo como centro principal una serie de jóvenes queer que van y vienen del día a día de Lazi, que suficiente tiene con lo suyo. Relaciones tóxicas (sin un ápice de romantización de las mismas), amistades inquebrantables, dolor, depresión, risas, fiestas, paseos infinitos, confidencias… y en definitiva, una búsqueda de su lugar en el mundo y de definición de una identidad propia por parte de este crisol de personajes.
La narración se caracteriza por no seguir una estructura convencional, hay una suerte de caos controlado que responde a esa organización en apuntes y al desorden imperante en la vida de Lazi (¿quién tuvo todo bajo control en los años universitarios?). Las anécdotas y recuerdos, a veces lineales, aparecen alternados con referencias al cine francés y la literatura japonesa.
Una lectura apasionante, que me llenó de angustia por las actitudes reales e imperfectas de Lazi, su forma de alejarse del amor de Shuiling, su miedo a sufrir y su ansiedad ante la soledad. Todo lo que no encontré en ‘Normal people’ de Sally Rooney, me lo dio multiplicado por mil ‘Apuntes de un cocodrilo’.
Ah, tal vez os preguntéis, ¿a qué vienen los cocodrilos? Es la forma absolutamente brillante de la autora de representar la conciencia de una sexualidad diversa que aparece en forma de remate o inicio de capítulos y que da para hablar horas. La novela se ambienta, y esto es fundamental, en Taipei a finales de los 80 / principios de los 90, un momento donde Taiwan buscaba desmarcarse de China y entre otras muchas cosas, dejó de condenar la homosexualidad, pero lo cierto es que está no fue aceptada de un día para otro. La puerta se abría, pero muy poquito y sin demasiado apoyo de la sociedad. Ahí veremos a Lazi, verde, con cola y colmillos. Es difícil hablar de esta genial y dolorosa animalización, pero si lo leéis, comentaremos y mucho.
‘Apuntes de un cocodrilo’ es la primera obra de la autora taiwanesa Qiu Miaojin, fue publicada en 1994, apenas un año antes de su suicidio a los veintiséis años. Absolutamente desconocida por mi hasta que me crucé con esta obra, es considerada una de las autoras más importante de la literatura lésbica del siglo XX y ya antes de ponerme a investigar sobre ella, solo con leer un par de capítulos, supe que estaba ante algo “importante” para mi vida lectora.
Esta novela, con tintes de autoficción, está organizada en forma de ocho “apuntes”, diarios, que escribe Lazi, la narradora protagonista, durante los años universitarios. A través de ellos, veremos sus vivencias y las de sus seres allegados: parejas, amistades, familiares, teniendo como centro principal una serie de jóvenes queer que van y vienen del día a día de Lazi, que suficiente tiene con lo suyo. Relaciones tóxicas (sin un ápice de romantización de las mismas), amistades inquebrantables, dolor, depresión, risas, fiestas, paseos infinitos, confidencias… y en definitiva, una búsqueda de su lugar en el mundo y de definición de una identidad propia por parte de este crisol de personajes.
La narración se caracteriza por no seguir una estructura convencional, hay una suerte de caos controlado que responde a esa organización en apuntes y al desorden imperante en la vida de Lazi (¿quién tuvo todo bajo control en los años universitarios?). Las anécdotas y recuerdos, a veces lineales, aparecen alternados con referencias al cine francés y la literatura japonesa.
Una lectura apasionante, que me llenó de angustia por las actitudes reales e imperfectas de Lazi, su forma de alejarse del amor de Shuiling, su miedo a sufrir y su ansiedad ante la soledad. Todo lo que no encontré en ‘Normal people’ de Sally Rooney, me lo dio multiplicado por mil ‘Apuntes de un cocodrilo’.
Ah, tal vez os preguntéis, ¿a qué vienen los cocodrilos? Es la forma absolutamente brillante de la autora de representar la conciencia de una sexualidad diversa que aparece en forma de remate o inicio de capítulos y que da para hablar horas. La novela se ambienta, y esto es fundamental, en Taipei a finales de los 80 / principios de los 90, un momento donde Taiwan buscaba desmarcarse de China y entre otras muchas cosas, dejó de condenar la homosexualidad, pero lo cierto es que está no fue aceptada de un día para otro. La puerta se abría, pero muy poquito y sin demasiado apoyo de la sociedad. Ahí veremos a Lazi, verde, con cola y colmillos. Es difícil hablar de esta genial y dolorosa animalización, pero si lo leéis, comentaremos y mucho.
January 14, 2025
the diary of a self hating lesbian clinging onto connection mixed in with a story of a crocodile experiencing lesbian loneliness and isolation. the latter half was incredible. pretentious but beautiful?
April 1, 2024
En el Taipei de principios de los 90, Lazi narra su vida y la de un grupo de jóvenes universitarios con los que se relaciona. Todos ellos son queer, y cada uno lidia con ello a su forma y bajo sus propias circunstancias, pero de alguna manera se atraen entre ellos, encontrando los unos en los otros a un igual, a un semejante, a otra persona que está pasando por lo mismo que ellos, a otra persona que siente y vive al margen de lo que la sociedad y las normas del decoro dictan, a otro ser humano que sufre y padece las mismas dudas, las mismas incertidumbres. A través de ocho largos apuntes realizados por Lazi, descubriremos los sentimientos de esta hacia la vida, hacia los demás y hacia sí misma.
Cualquier lector que lleve gran parte de su vida leyendo, sabe de buena tinta que a lo largo de esta, son muchos los libros que nos van a apasionar, consiguiendo crearnos adicción mientras los leemos, provocarnos felicidad o hacernos echar alguna lagrimita. Muchos de estos pasaran a convertirse en parte de nuestros grandes favoritos, libros que al pensar en ellos logran sacarnos una sonrisa, producto de esa gran experiencia que produjo su lectura y que aún se mantiene en nuestro recuerdo. Pero los lectores también sabemos que, lo que no pasa con tanta frecuencia es que un libro te arañe la piel hasta desgarrártela, que se introduzca dentro de ti y te retuerza las tripas, que te encoja el corazón hasta tal punto que te sumerjas entre sus páginas aterrado, no porque sea un libro de terror, si no porque en él puedes ver reflejado tus peores miedos, tus momentos más vulnerables. “Apuntes de un cocodrilo” ha significado todo esto para mí.
La incertidumbre persistente, el dolor que provoca la falta de aceptación de la sociedad, lo cual repercute en la propia, y la sensación de estar constantemente sobreviviendo es algo que cualquier infancia, juventud e, incluso, madurez queer ha experimentado. Enfrentarme a personajes como Lazi, Shuiling, Chukuang, Mengsheng, Tuntun o Zhirou, verme reflejado en sus sentimientos, en sus inseguridades, en su búsqueda infinita para descubrir quienes son, su propia autodeterminación como personas libres que desean, ha sido duro. En ese sentido, leer este libro ha sido toda una catarsis para mí, mientras me empapaba de cada página de esta obra de Qiu Miaojin, sentía incomodidad y desasosiego, por el recuerdo de demasiados pensamientos intrusivos que me resultaban familiares, pero sentía también mucha comprensión, y esa sensación de sentirse comprendido, de comprobar que las vidas de las personas queer, incluso aunque estén separadas por diferentes continentes, no están tan alejadas, y todos pasamos por lo mismo, todos tratamos de sobrevivir como mejor podemos, también tienen un increíble efecto sanador.
Y estas ganas de sobrevivir, de encajar es sobre lo que todo el tiempo reflexiona nuestra protagonista, hasta el punto de tratar de contener su propia naturaleza, de suprimir lo que es, lo que siente, para ajustarse a lo que la sociedad espera de ella. Lazi lucha contra si misma, contra la atracción que siente por otras mujeres, y esto la sumerge en un mar de dudas y de sufrimiento. Sin embargo, uno es lo que es, y su verdadero ser siempre vuelve a emerger a la superficie, por más que trates de esconderlo en el fondo del mar, así que tanto Lazi, como el resto de personajes, navegan continuamente en la contradicción resultante de lo que son y lo que tienen miedo de ser. Por ello, la violencia inunda la vida de estas personas, se castigan a sí mismos y a otros, sus sentimientos pasan del amor al odio, y de la exaltación de este afecto al desprecio que les genera disfrutar de dicho sentimiento. El suicidio como única forma de salvación y descanso, se convierte en un tema recurrente para los personajes.
"Apuntes de un cocodrilo" no es una historia sencilla, y no solo por su dureza, sino también porque funciona como un diario de anotaciones de su protagonista, en el que va plasmando sus sentimientos y vivencias para desahogarse de su dolor, tratando de comprender lo que siente y encontrar una cura para sus heridas, por lo cual, es una lectura compleja y profunda. Además, hay tanta cantidad de verdad en esta novela, que está plagada de reflexiones y pensamientos que te dejan pensando durante horas, por eso la mejor manera de leerla, es con los cinco sentidos puestos en ella, sin perderse ni una sola palabra.
La historia muestra a la propia ciudad de Taipei como un personaje más, sus calles se funden con sus personajes, un Taipei que avanzaba hacía la modernidad, pese a la reticencia de los más anticuados, aportando ese punto de ambientación que termina de redondear esta exquisita obra. Si ya tenía ganas de poder visitar algún día Taiwan y ver con mis propios ojos Taipei, está novela ha conseguido intensificar aún más si cabe este deseo. Mención muy especial merece la metáfora del cocodrilo, que quizás resulte desconcertante inicialmente, pero que va tomando forma poco a poco hasta que las piezas comienzan a encajar y todo queda perfectamente plasmado.
Me he sentido completamente identificado con el personaje de Lazi, y muy conectado con al autora, ya que, a poco que hayas leído algo sobre su vida, sabes que esta historia, pese a ser de ficción, habla sobre ella, sobre sus sentimientos, su identidad y su dolor. La vulnerabilidad de la propia autora traspasa las páginas y es imposible no conectar con ella, de entenderla, de saber que has pasado por eso, que sabes lo que es. Aprovechando que la propia autora cita varias veces a Haruki Murakami durante la obra, quería acabar mi opinión sobre esta joya compartiendo una cita del autor que para mí refleja muy bien porque he sentido que traspasaba las páginas y hablaba directamente con la propia autora, esa joven taiwanesa que luchaba por aceptarse en un mundo que no quería aceptarla, como si de tú a tú nos abriéramos el uno al otro, pese a los miles de kilómetros y años que separan nuestras vidas. Por favor, leed a Qiu Miaojin, leedla. La cita es la siguiente:
“Los corazones humanos no se unen sólo mediante la armonía. Se unen, mas bien, herida con herida. Dolor con dolor. Fragilidad con fragilidad. No existe silencio sin un grito desgarrador, no existe perdón sin que se derrame sangre, no existe aceptación sin pasar por un intenso sentimiento de pérdida. Ésos son los cimientos de la verdadera armonía”.
Cualquier lector que lleve gran parte de su vida leyendo, sabe de buena tinta que a lo largo de esta, son muchos los libros que nos van a apasionar, consiguiendo crearnos adicción mientras los leemos, provocarnos felicidad o hacernos echar alguna lagrimita. Muchos de estos pasaran a convertirse en parte de nuestros grandes favoritos, libros que al pensar en ellos logran sacarnos una sonrisa, producto de esa gran experiencia que produjo su lectura y que aún se mantiene en nuestro recuerdo. Pero los lectores también sabemos que, lo que no pasa con tanta frecuencia es que un libro te arañe la piel hasta desgarrártela, que se introduzca dentro de ti y te retuerza las tripas, que te encoja el corazón hasta tal punto que te sumerjas entre sus páginas aterrado, no porque sea un libro de terror, si no porque en él puedes ver reflejado tus peores miedos, tus momentos más vulnerables. “Apuntes de un cocodrilo” ha significado todo esto para mí.
La incertidumbre persistente, el dolor que provoca la falta de aceptación de la sociedad, lo cual repercute en la propia, y la sensación de estar constantemente sobreviviendo es algo que cualquier infancia, juventud e, incluso, madurez queer ha experimentado. Enfrentarme a personajes como Lazi, Shuiling, Chukuang, Mengsheng, Tuntun o Zhirou, verme reflejado en sus sentimientos, en sus inseguridades, en su búsqueda infinita para descubrir quienes son, su propia autodeterminación como personas libres que desean, ha sido duro. En ese sentido, leer este libro ha sido toda una catarsis para mí, mientras me empapaba de cada página de esta obra de Qiu Miaojin, sentía incomodidad y desasosiego, por el recuerdo de demasiados pensamientos intrusivos que me resultaban familiares, pero sentía también mucha comprensión, y esa sensación de sentirse comprendido, de comprobar que las vidas de las personas queer, incluso aunque estén separadas por diferentes continentes, no están tan alejadas, y todos pasamos por lo mismo, todos tratamos de sobrevivir como mejor podemos, también tienen un increíble efecto sanador.
Y estas ganas de sobrevivir, de encajar es sobre lo que todo el tiempo reflexiona nuestra protagonista, hasta el punto de tratar de contener su propia naturaleza, de suprimir lo que es, lo que siente, para ajustarse a lo que la sociedad espera de ella. Lazi lucha contra si misma, contra la atracción que siente por otras mujeres, y esto la sumerge en un mar de dudas y de sufrimiento. Sin embargo, uno es lo que es, y su verdadero ser siempre vuelve a emerger a la superficie, por más que trates de esconderlo en el fondo del mar, así que tanto Lazi, como el resto de personajes, navegan continuamente en la contradicción resultante de lo que son y lo que tienen miedo de ser. Por ello, la violencia inunda la vida de estas personas, se castigan a sí mismos y a otros, sus sentimientos pasan del amor al odio, y de la exaltación de este afecto al desprecio que les genera disfrutar de dicho sentimiento. El suicidio como única forma de salvación y descanso, se convierte en un tema recurrente para los personajes.
"Apuntes de un cocodrilo" no es una historia sencilla, y no solo por su dureza, sino también porque funciona como un diario de anotaciones de su protagonista, en el que va plasmando sus sentimientos y vivencias para desahogarse de su dolor, tratando de comprender lo que siente y encontrar una cura para sus heridas, por lo cual, es una lectura compleja y profunda. Además, hay tanta cantidad de verdad en esta novela, que está plagada de reflexiones y pensamientos que te dejan pensando durante horas, por eso la mejor manera de leerla, es con los cinco sentidos puestos en ella, sin perderse ni una sola palabra.
La historia muestra a la propia ciudad de Taipei como un personaje más, sus calles se funden con sus personajes, un Taipei que avanzaba hacía la modernidad, pese a la reticencia de los más anticuados, aportando ese punto de ambientación que termina de redondear esta exquisita obra. Si ya tenía ganas de poder visitar algún día Taiwan y ver con mis propios ojos Taipei, está novela ha conseguido intensificar aún más si cabe este deseo. Mención muy especial merece la metáfora del cocodrilo, que quizás resulte desconcertante inicialmente, pero que va tomando forma poco a poco hasta que las piezas comienzan a encajar y todo queda perfectamente plasmado.
Me he sentido completamente identificado con el personaje de Lazi, y muy conectado con al autora, ya que, a poco que hayas leído algo sobre su vida, sabes que esta historia, pese a ser de ficción, habla sobre ella, sobre sus sentimientos, su identidad y su dolor. La vulnerabilidad de la propia autora traspasa las páginas y es imposible no conectar con ella, de entenderla, de saber que has pasado por eso, que sabes lo que es. Aprovechando que la propia autora cita varias veces a Haruki Murakami durante la obra, quería acabar mi opinión sobre esta joya compartiendo una cita del autor que para mí refleja muy bien porque he sentido que traspasaba las páginas y hablaba directamente con la propia autora, esa joven taiwanesa que luchaba por aceptarse en un mundo que no quería aceptarla, como si de tú a tú nos abriéramos el uno al otro, pese a los miles de kilómetros y años que separan nuestras vidas. Por favor, leed a Qiu Miaojin, leedla. La cita es la siguiente:
“Los corazones humanos no se unen sólo mediante la armonía. Se unen, mas bien, herida con herida. Dolor con dolor. Fragilidad con fragilidad. No existe silencio sin un grito desgarrador, no existe perdón sin que se derrame sangre, no existe aceptación sin pasar por un intenso sentimiento de pérdida. Ésos son los cimientos de la verdadera armonía”.
November 16, 2022
“What is the human race anyway, but a multitude of outlets for desires?” Meng Sheng asks the narrator halfway through the postmodernist novel Notes From a Crocodile. “Desires teach us lessons, and we have to go forth into the new worlds that we construct for ourselves … When you can’t, that’s when you die” (110).
This death-desire predicament is one that the characters, an eclectic mix of angsty, queer college students, find themselves mired in for the entirety of Notes From a Crocodile, a collection of eight notebooks written during the unnamed narrator’s time in college interpolated with brief satirical/surrealist accounts of crocodile sightings in late-80s era Taipei.
Enveloped in the throes of passion but then reaching a sudden impasse with their unreciprocated love (or just finding themselves in an extremely complicated situation because no one in this book communicates and they all love to self-destruct and self-sabotage!!), the characters find themselves plunged into sudden abject misery that leaves them listlessly waiting for death. Struggling to find an outlet for their desire, they enter a destructive cycle of emotional and physical (self-)harm.
The crocodile sections follow a separate narrative, unrelated to the world of the collegiate characters but clearly thematically related in its commentary on queer existence. As the mainstream becomes aware of the existence of crocodiles, everyone becomes crocodile crazy—there’s a continued media frenzy over crocodiles, people with PhDs are theorizing about crocodile ontology, the government becomes involved and demands crocodiles to out themselves (they wear human suits to hide), everyone, basically, is curious about but threatened by crocodiles. The crocodile protagonist goes into hiding and, well, let’s just say there’s not a great ending for him.
There’s a clear connection between the crocodile, who hides in a human suit as society begins to fear the “deviant crocodile” who may infect humans with their crocodileness and blame the crocodile for instability of society, and the novel’s queer characters. Early on, Lazi writes about fearing her sexual desires:
“To this day, I’ve never understood my fear. Where does it come from? … It felt like the fear was coming from inside me … I had no hand whatsoever in shaping the self that was crawling with fear. Yet I grew exactly into that: a carnal being stirring the cement of fear with every step toward adulthood. Since I feared my sexual desires and who I fundamentally was, fear stirred up even deeper fears. My life was reduced to that of some hideous beast. I felt as if I had to hide in a cave, lest anyone discover my true nature.” (54)
Fear, desire, hatred, love, ennui and bliss all messily collide within the pages of Lazi’s journal. Notes From a Crocodile chronicles the struggle of out-of-control bodies and bodies that refused to be controlled—even if by their own selves.
I'll end this review on this note, something Meng Sheng tells Lazi as he takes her around the city on his motorcycle: “To have paid such a high price to live, only to die! Don’t tell me that I don’t have the right to say no thanks” (42).
This death-desire predicament is one that the characters, an eclectic mix of angsty, queer college students, find themselves mired in for the entirety of Notes From a Crocodile, a collection of eight notebooks written during the unnamed narrator’s time in college interpolated with brief satirical/surrealist accounts of crocodile sightings in late-80s era Taipei.
Enveloped in the throes of passion but then reaching a sudden impasse with their unreciprocated love (or just finding themselves in an extremely complicated situation because no one in this book communicates and they all love to self-destruct and self-sabotage!!), the characters find themselves plunged into sudden abject misery that leaves them listlessly waiting for death. Struggling to find an outlet for their desire, they enter a destructive cycle of emotional and physical (self-)harm.
The crocodile sections follow a separate narrative, unrelated to the world of the collegiate characters but clearly thematically related in its commentary on queer existence. As the mainstream becomes aware of the existence of crocodiles, everyone becomes crocodile crazy—there’s a continued media frenzy over crocodiles, people with PhDs are theorizing about crocodile ontology, the government becomes involved and demands crocodiles to out themselves (they wear human suits to hide), everyone, basically, is curious about but threatened by crocodiles. The crocodile protagonist goes into hiding and, well, let’s just say there’s not a great ending for him.
There’s a clear connection between the crocodile, who hides in a human suit as society begins to fear the “deviant crocodile” who may infect humans with their crocodileness and blame the crocodile for instability of society, and the novel’s queer characters. Early on, Lazi writes about fearing her sexual desires:
“To this day, I’ve never understood my fear. Where does it come from? … It felt like the fear was coming from inside me … I had no hand whatsoever in shaping the self that was crawling with fear. Yet I grew exactly into that: a carnal being stirring the cement of fear with every step toward adulthood. Since I feared my sexual desires and who I fundamentally was, fear stirred up even deeper fears. My life was reduced to that of some hideous beast. I felt as if I had to hide in a cave, lest anyone discover my true nature.” (54)
Fear, desire, hatred, love, ennui and bliss all messily collide within the pages of Lazi’s journal. Notes From a Crocodile chronicles the struggle of out-of-control bodies and bodies that refused to be controlled—even if by their own selves.
I'll end this review on this note, something Meng Sheng tells Lazi as he takes her around the city on his motorcycle: “To have paid such a high price to live, only to die! Don’t tell me that I don’t have the right to say no thanks” (42).
September 17, 2022
It didn’t matter what kind of person I was inside, how I yearned for a bond with Xiao Fan, or if my desire to love her had been my undoing: The world didn’t care. It was nothing personal. Even the woman right in front of me was telling me no. There was no right or wrong here. In the end, the world didn’t owe me anything, not even half a chance. That was the hand I’d been dealt in life, and while detachment was enough for me to withstand hatred, extricating myself from the jaws of suffering called for enough detachment to exercise cruelty.
4.5 stars.
Reading this was like a fever dream. I couldn't stop. I had to obsessively unravel the story, waiting for something terrible to happen. But the only truly terrible thing that happened was that I felt viciously seen.
Most readers don't like the narrator's fatalism and melodrama. But that's exactly why I loved this book so much. Learning that the author killed herself at the age of 26 put this book in a new light. It reminds me of other raw semi-autobiographical novels of youthful melancholy: Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, Dazai Osamu's No Longer Human. Qiu is so well-read; her narrator makes constant references to Western and Eastern films and literature, so I'm sure she must have read those books. I desperately want to know what she thought of them.
But unlike those other books, the reason Notes of a Crocodile pierced me so deeply is because it is a lesbian woman's chronicle of all her deepest, darkest thoughts and desires. I was shocked at how relatable it was; at how many thoughts and feelings we shared — bad, shameful, unspeakable ones, really. Perhaps it's because we are both Asian lesbians; perhaps it's because she was born much too early. Either way, it touched me in a way English sapphic books don't.
The only reason this is a 4.5 is because it feels disjointed and confusing at times, like you're missing context. I imagine it makes more sense if you're reading in Chinese. I read an article about its historical context. Despite Taiwan's modern reputation as a beacon for Asian gay rights, it wasn't always that way, and unfortunately Qiu was alive during a dark time. But her books, while published posthumously, became a beacon, and until now she lights the way for readers like me.
Otherwise, the translation is fantastic. It's poetic, fluid, and flows so naturally that you would think it was originally written in English. I can't imagine how hard that is to do, so kudos to the translator.
Also, there isn't much plot to this short book. It is literally a compilation of journals, so you get slice-of-life vignettes and endless monologues. The other characters are really just a vehicle for the author to express her philosophy. It isn't for everyone, but it cut me to the core and I'll be thinking about it for a long time.
May 21, 2025
The references to cinema and music managed to be perfect and fitting when they could have easily become clumsy. This is an intelligent work, with such beautiful emotion pouring through the prose. It feels like a writer unafraid of what anybody has to say of the book, truly like it was written for them. It never feels amateurish though. Loved the NYRB copy I picked out in Liverpool with loml
August 18, 2022
✧ ↝ 5 stars
i think that if a book has this many layers to it and makes me feel some kind of way because it appeals to the most emo, gay, melodramatic part of me that there is, then it deserves five stars.
review to come
i think that if a book has this many layers to it and makes me feel some kind of way because it appeals to the most emo, gay, melodramatic part of me that there is, then it deserves five stars.
review to come
October 18, 2018
Ein Roman für sechzehnjährige Teenymädchen, die gerade eine heftige Adoleszenzkrise durchleben. Mir hat er nur Erschöpfung und Kopfschmerzen bereitet. Leider.
June 19, 2023
There was too much expected from the reader with little to no prompting. We are told that there is agony and despair and anguish, but we are only told these things. There was no emotional buildup or rhythm. The characters monologue at each other; there is an excessive sentimentality in their words that is in discord with their actions and expressions. The dialogue is awkward and unnatural. There are no beats in the conversation, no tensions, no wit. It was like reading the lyrics of an unreleased song whose tune you will never know. You read the dialogue, continuously and without tonal cues because the characters’ voices are so indistinctive; they mix into an unfortunate muddy orange. Often, the dialogue would prematurely pick up in undue sentimentality that I felt I had missed a page. The writing falls embarrassingly short of the poetic richness it seems to pursue and flops instead into general trite remarks about unreciprocated love and self-loathing. Worse than poeticising depression is failing to do so, and in this failure, referencing the poetic standard you failed to achieve.
There’s no plot. There’s only the incredibly indecisive main character, Lazi, going from woman to the next, waiting for one of them to orient her or give her purpose, all the while sulking and befriending people she seems to have little connection to, one of whom sends her severed toes in the post. Then there are chapters in which crocodiles with human suits struggle to fit in with humans, while eating cream-puffs and wearing mink coats. This is an analogy for queer people in a homophobic setting. The specificity of the crocodiles’ eating habits, their fashion, and their bathing preferences confused me. I didn’t understand the relevance.
There are some points where I felt there might be a cusp of a good story: something about unfulfilled female desire which teases the reader, some jealousy, but this potential was just burnt. Even when the characters were manipulating each other, their actions were too inert, not with a silent passiveness that stings but with one that sags into a tired languidness. It’s not exactly cynicism either because even cynicism usually has some consequential dry humour, some spark of wit. There are flickers of character development near the end that are just as clumsily snuffed out. Maybe this is meant to be a book without structure, without an arc, without character development or even vague motives. Just something that doesn’t even have the dignity to collapse, but which falls disappointingly instead, without eliciting even a thud.
Pretty cover though. The orange is decisively vibrant.
There’s no plot. There’s only the incredibly indecisive main character, Lazi, going from woman to the next, waiting for one of them to orient her or give her purpose, all the while sulking and befriending people she seems to have little connection to, one of whom sends her severed toes in the post. Then there are chapters in which crocodiles with human suits struggle to fit in with humans, while eating cream-puffs and wearing mink coats. This is an analogy for queer people in a homophobic setting. The specificity of the crocodiles’ eating habits, their fashion, and their bathing preferences confused me. I didn’t understand the relevance.
There are some points where I felt there might be a cusp of a good story: something about unfulfilled female desire which teases the reader, some jealousy, but this potential was just burnt. Even when the characters were manipulating each other, their actions were too inert, not with a silent passiveness that stings but with one that sags into a tired languidness. It’s not exactly cynicism either because even cynicism usually has some consequential dry humour, some spark of wit. There are flickers of character development near the end that are just as clumsily snuffed out. Maybe this is meant to be a book without structure, without an arc, without character development or even vague motives. Just something that doesn’t even have the dignity to collapse, but which falls disappointingly instead, without eliciting even a thud.
Pretty cover though. The orange is decisively vibrant.
July 31, 2017
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. Because of this, some parts of the novel are difficult to stomach: the story shames Lazi for "giving in", and having sex with a woman, for example. It's chaotic novel, and, because it was published posthumously, I wonder if it was sufficiently edited. The story feels crowded without ever really exploring any one character in depth, but that being said, it's an excellent description of depression, and the style is complex and compelling.
Read
August 25, 2025This translated novel was initially published in Taiwan in 1994, and made a huge and lasting impact on the queer literature of Taiwan and China- so much so that the nickname of the main character has come to simply mean "lesbian" in queer slang. It follows a very depressed queer college student through all four years of her time at the National Taiwan University in Taipei, her all-consuming toxic love affairs, her binge drinking, introspection, and queer friend circle. Over and over she sabotages her own closest relationships, trying to preserve people in her memory like pressed flowers rather than let them grow, change or communicate honestly about their needs. Woven through this is a second narrative about a media frenzy over the story that crocodiles are living among humans, disguised in human suits, and only detectable by certain behaviors- a humorous but effective metaphor for homophobic media attention on queer and trans communities. I read this for book club and was grateful I had the thoughtful discussion to help me unpack it, because to be honest I struggled with the text and at times did not enjoy reading it. It did not impact me emotionally, though some of my book club members loved it and really connected to it. It was not for me! But if you are making a survey of classic non-English early queer texts, this is a vital entry on that list.
Read
April 27, 2025lesbians are crazy i say appreciatively… shall write a more complex review once i have fully digested it
edit: ok upon further pondering i just have to say that this book really excelled at what it was trying to do. 5/5 in that regard; i am a surrealism lover so the bits and pieces with the crocodile metaphor were much appreciated because i love it when things are a bit odd. also it was heartbreaking and so realistic when it comes to what is being queer. this brings out so many questions around it; not only to do with sexuality itself but the role your gender and gender presentation play in how you exhibit said sexuality. all in all, really good book. i would be lying to all of you, however, if i said that spending all these pages inside the narrator's mind wasn't excruciating because she is the maker of her own misery and it's just so painful to read. my favorite character was tun tun. love her to death. the prose was always resounding in its tone. i believe that is all.
edit: ok upon further pondering i just have to say that this book really excelled at what it was trying to do. 5/5 in that regard; i am a surrealism lover so the bits and pieces with the crocodile metaphor were much appreciated because i love it when things are a bit odd. also it was heartbreaking and so realistic when it comes to what is being queer. this brings out so many questions around it; not only to do with sexuality itself but the role your gender and gender presentation play in how you exhibit said sexuality. all in all, really good book. i would be lying to all of you, however, if i said that spending all these pages inside the narrator's mind wasn't excruciating because she is the maker of her own misery and it's just so painful to read. my favorite character was tun tun. love her to death. the prose was always resounding in its tone. i believe that is all.
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