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A tender story about a family growing apart. The children are on the cusp of adulthood and have little interest in—or consideration for—their parents as they enjoy a summer in the countryside.

While it’s a family drama, the youngest son—16-year-old Jay—is very much the main character. We follow him as he discovers himself, falls in love for the first time, and begins to figure out his future.

The parents, for their part, no longer understand their children; they don’t know how to communicate with them and are struggling to rediscover who they are when they’re no longer needed. What might their relationship look like when the kids are gone?

This is a story full of questions and light on answers. It’s beautifully written, and the characters jump off the page. I can’t wait to read the rest of the books in this series.

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Beautiful writing and story. It felt a little anti-climactic but overall, it was an enjoyable read with beautiful prose.

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I love a novel that dives into the secrets that exist within different members of a family. This book covers themes of discovering sexuality, climate change, and racism. I thought the book was well written, but wish there was something to pull me in more. Perhaps it needed to be more descriptive?

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Rating this with 3.5 stars.

The South was a light yet heavy, melancholic and slow paced read. We switched through the members of the Lim family and their perspectives (which was, admittedly, confusing at first to know whose voice I was reading) — and there were parts where I felt we could have stayed with the main character more. Nonetheless, this was a good start/introduction to Tash Aw and I’m looking forward to giving his other books a try.

Thank you for the ARC!

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A really beautiful coming of age story that explores class, power and family. Told primarily through the character of Jay, a young man who travels south with his family to a farm that his mother recently inherited. Interspersed with Jay's perspectives, the reader also hears from his mother, sister and the manager of the farm which really help to provide more context and understanding.

Jay meets Chuan, the son of the man in charge of the farm and their relationship develops over the book. For such a short book Aw has done a really beautiful job of giving most of the characters a full interiority and a strong foundation to continue this quartet (I only learned that this was the first book in a series of four after I had finished the book and it definitely helps to explain some of the narrative and character decisions).

The writing is clear and almost detached which I do feel kept me at arm's length from the characters. As a result, I never felt overly emotionally involved in their connections and struggles.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for this advanced copy.

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DNF @ 41%

Setting: Malaysia
rep: gay protagonist

this is the second time I've tried to read this book, and the second time I have DNFd it. unfortunately it just isn't for me. there's a distance to the writing that has me really struggling to connect to the story and the constant perspective hopping is making it really hard to get into the characters. though it's tempting to persevere just to have completed it, I know I'd only end up being disappointed further.

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Tash Aw’s The South is a rich and intimate coming-of-age story focusing on Jay, a 17‑year‑old who finds himself stranded on a neglected family farm after his grandfather’s death. Aw lets the narrative unfold slowly and naturally. There are no dramatic revelations or wild twists; instead, we follow Jay through a series of small, intimate moments — a walk under the oppressive afternoon sun, a conversation that sparks a first love — that collectively shape him. His bond with Chuan, the son of the farm’s caretaker, evolves quietly but profoundly. Chuan’s confidence and deep connection to the land help Jay find peace and a place where he feels he belongs.

The novel is not just about a young man’s future; it’s also about a family in transition. Jay’s father, Jack, finds himself stranded in a marriage that’s losing its direction. His mother, Sui, struggles to adjust to a world that feels increasingly distant from her. His sisters, meanwhile, are trying to make their own way in a changing society. The result is an energetic portrait of a family trying to stay together.

Highly recommended!

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This book is slow, and arguably not a lot happens, but it's deeply emotional and profound. Set in southern Malaysia in the 1990s, this story follows a family that moves from the city to a struggling farm in the countryside. Jay, the youngest sibling, develops a friendship with the farmer's son Chuan, which turns into a romantic connection. Meanwhile, Jay's siblings and parents wonder what they will do with their futures and navigate their own complicated relationships.

I found it hard to get into this book in the beginning because not a lot was happening, but then I became invested in the family and interpersonal dynamics. Aw's writing is gorgeous and so visceral: I felt the oppressive heat and the physicality of the work the farmers were doing, and although we spend the book mostly in Jay's head, we also occasionally get the perspective of other characters, which adds great context and depth. I loved the slow build between Jay and Chuan - the nerves and urgency Jay feels and doesn't know how to express felt so true to having a crush as a teenager, and their attempts at communication are so sweet. Overall, this was lovely.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review!

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There's a lot going on in The South and the author handles it with finesse. This is definitely a coming-of-age story... I was enraptured with nostalgia. this is such a throw back to the early days of discovering one's identity. Strong voice for female characters which I love! I thought it was very timely that global climate change was woven into the story.

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This is my first Tasha Aw novel. Reading this right on the heels on Ocean's Vuoung's latest, it's hard not to draw some comparisons, as separated as they are by entire continents. Both have a young, queer boy as a narrator, both are navigating the hopelessness of their family's legacy, and both of whose lives are defined by the specific racism of where they live. Yet this one feels far away from feeling emotionally accessible or familiar than Ocean's work. And not only because it's set in Malaysia while Vuoung's work is based on Connecticut, which believe me, even as an American sometimes feels alien to me. If anything, the tempo and travails of contemporary Southeast Asian life feels more familiar to me. It could be the writing, which jumps around pretty frantically through the POVs of almost every named character, while only letting one character speak in first person. So it's hard to pin down the actual makeup of everyone's internal life if it's from Jay's perspective only, and Jay himself is not the most reliable or sympathetic protagonist. For some reason I thought this would focus more on Jay and Chuan's developing relationship and its challenges and sweetness. But not only was it borderline toxic, its development was mostly shoved to the edges of the story of a family who is messy and bitter and collectively and individually at make or break points in their journeys. I wasn't really looking for a romance in this per se, so I wasn't too disappointed by the sidelining of Jay and Chuan. Other characters emerged as more interesting and having more interesting dynamics that I wished had more of a center narrative stage, such as Jay's sisters and mom. Sui and Fong's relationship also suffered the same fate as Jay and Chuan's, even more in that it wasn't necessarily romantic but tied to their relationship to the land that they loved and wanted to nurture, and as Others in the family. Lina was such a force of nature and I wish this was entirely from her POV. The other sister barely got any personality attributed to her except to make a point about Malay/Chinese relationships and prejudices. All of that said, the writing felt powerful and profound frequently but also as disjointed as the story of a particularly dysfunctional family, in the throes of a decaying legacy. Perhaps my unfamiliarity with contemporary Malaysian culture also contributed to the distance I felt from the characters, but perhaps it's just not a narrative structure that works for me. That said, I'd be curious to check out other works by a clearly globally celebrated author.

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Tash Aw’s The South is a delicate portrait of a family living with their own secrets, private frustrations, and challenged loves for each other. At the center of this tangled familial relations was the youngest child’s experience of first love, as fleeting and as heavy as the summer they spent in the south. The characters felt real and whole, achieved through chapters that alternated perspectives among family members to reveal and delve into their inner spaces. The family aspect of the story seemed better written, with the matriarch’s endless confusion towards motherhood being my favorite character study here. But the romantic coming-of-age was deftly told, too, if a bit clunky in some parts. These minor issues often took me out of my suspension, jumping from the first to the omnipresent third or when a plot point overlapped another without a proper bridging, but these seemed secondary to Aw’s intent of telling a good story, which, in the end and despite my early misgivings, was a really good one. What transpired was a poignant tale that already felt like it was being dissolved from one’s memory as one was writing it.

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Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I really enjoyed this! The writing style and the vibes and the setting were right up my alley!

There were a lot of well written lines or lines that really made you think or feel. I highlighted so many of them! They packed such a punch.

I wish we followed Jay a little more. He was the core of the story, but we got a lot of his parent’s story. Which don’t get me wrong, I was interested in the dynamics of their characters and how they reacted to each other, but it sometimes felt that Jay and Chaun weren’t the main focal point of the story. I wish we knew that a lot of it would be about his mom. Then I could be prepared for that. I was expecting to follow Jay and Chaun the entire time with their family being in the background, but that was not the case.

I liked that the sisters were involved in the story as well! Even though they weren’t in it often, when they were there they were very impactful! I didn’t relate to Yin as much, but I LOVED Lina. I related to her mindset completely, so any time she said her opinions I couldn’t help but cheer for her.

I loved Fong. He was such a great character, even though you couldn’t help but feel bad for him. I liked his presence in the story.

I liked the conversation about teenagehood and how one little thing in your life can see so big one moment but small the next. Or how things can be important to you at one point, but in the future not anymore. There was a lot of commentary on what you do with your life and the choices you make and where they can lead you. Some of the sentiments were sad to think about, but it is true for every day life for some people. Sometimes when you’re young you can’t see the big picture. Sometimes you find yourself in situations you aren’t happy with, but find it’s too late to escape. At least in lack of trying.

I had a bit of a hard time following it sometimes because it didn’t have quotes around the dialogue and a lot of it was all lumped together. Whether that was the nature of the format of the arc I had and it’ll be fixed in the final copy or not. Honestly I thought it fit well with the story and gave it some charm. It just made sense for it to be that way even if it was confusing at times.

It was a very slow moving book though. Not that it’s bad, but it’s a slog to get through. I didn’t have an easy time reading it; you really had to concentrate or you might miss a lot. Maybe because of the lack of dialogue, but it took me a long time to finish it, despite it being under 300 pages. If you have a hard time with books like that, this one probably isn’t for you.

Everything about this was a slow burn, especially the relationship. We didn’t even get to see them together much which made me sad. The tension and the soft touches between them were great, but I was hoping for a little more.

It could be considered a boring book to some, but I liked the characters enough to want to keep reading. If you don’t get invested in the characters, you probably won’t like this unfortunately.

There was something we learned about his father that was quickly told and kind of brushed over. I wish it was talked about more and we learned more about it. I understand that Sui pushed it to the side and spared her kids from knowing, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t get more of her thoughts on it. I just feel like it didn’t need to be in there then.

I wish we saw more of the aftermath of the events that took place by the end of the book.

It was a sad story. It did not have an happy ending in my opinion. Which is the case in real life for some people, but I was hoping for a little more hope. Realistic, but still sad.

It ended very abruptly which I didn’t like very much, but it ended open ended so you can imagine it had a happy ending! I can almost tell the author wants the readers to think that they never see each other again which makes me sad. I felt a sense of heaviness in my chest when finishing. Which shows the author is good at writing! When you can feel strong emotions about fictional characters, that’s when you know it’s a good book.

Despite some of my complaints, I did really enjoy the writing of this novel, so if you like a slow burn about family relations and just day-to-day life, you will enjoy this!

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Despite the cultural aspect and intriguing locale, this first entry in a planned tetralogy did not really catch fire for me. There may have been some metafictional aspects which explains the hesitancy, and there really was some lovely prose. But on the whole, I was disappointed in the overall experience.

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In this beautifully written and nuanced coming-of-age tale set in the 1990s, 16 year old Jay Lim, his two older sisters, and their parents travel south from their unnamed Malaysian city for the school holidays to visit property, “twenty hectares of scrubby jungle land and farmland,” that Jay’s mother, Sui Ching, inherited from her late father-in-law. The family is greeted by the farm manager, Fong, who is trying to operate a farm that is dying because of persistent drought and lack of financial resources. Jay and Fong are half brothers who share a father, but Jay’s mother was picked by a match maker whereas Fong’s mother was a bar girl: “In another life Jack could have been the bastard, and Fong the inheritor.”

Aw evokes a melancholy mood of decline, not only impacting the farm but that troubles the financially plagued country. Jay will be leaving school and will need to find a job or go to college, and both prospects are bleak. There are no jobs and his parents couldn’t afford the college tuition fees. Jay is dispatched by his dad to make himself useful on the land and he works with Chuan, Fong’s son from a brief marriage to his teenage sweetheart who was lured away by the lights of Singapore. Over the course of the hot days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan. Working the fields, drinking, shopping, swimming or eating, the connection between Jay and Chuan intensifies. Jay relishes having his days molded to Chuan’s and he didn’t want that structure to be disturbed by interlopers, like his sisters or Chuan’s girlfriend.

Although Aw focuses on Jay, his tale also touches on the other members of the family, particularly Sui, a smart country girl who married Jack, her mathematics teacher from technical school. For Sui, the change in routine allows her to contemplate her twenty year loveless marriage and she, like Jay, finds freedom in the countryside. Apparently, this is the first volume of a quartet, and I am eager to learn if the Lim children can live their lives on their own terms. Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Net Galley for this exquisite novel.

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The South, the first in a planned quartet, is set in rural south Malaysia in the 1990s. At its core, it is a queer coming of age story, but it includes so much more in a surprisingly slim package, all while neither feeling overstuffed nor neglecting to give the many themes the depth of treatment they deserve. The plot opens with 17 year old Jay, father Jack, mother Sui, and his two sisters, travelling from Kuala Lumpur to a farm that Sui has just inherited from Jack's father. The farm has fallen into disrepair, and Jack sends Jay to work on the land alongside Fong, the family manager and illegitimate son of Jack's father, and Fong's son Chuan. Jay and Chuan soon develop feelings for each other. Alongside the already complicated family dynamics, Siu is coming to grips with her unhappy marriage to Jack, her former professor, who is controlling and unfaithful, Jack is contending with the loss of his job, and Yin is involved in a long distance relationship that her sister tries to convince her is doomed due to differences in ethnicity and in wealth. Divides in Malaysian society - rich vs. poor, urban vs. rural, educated vs. uneducated, Malaysia vs. Chinese Malaysians are all canvassed. The writing was gorgeous and tender yet understated. The writing really excelled when it came to atmosphere, both the heat and parchedness of the natural world, the tensions between some characters, and the longing between others. My one reservation was that the changing perspectives and non-linear storytelling kept me at a distance from the stories and the characters. Despite this, I do recommend this novel and look forward to seeing how the quartet develops.

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The South is a short, intimate novel about family and the beginning of young love in a changing country. We meet Jay, a teenager who ventures to his family's rural estate in Malaysia after many years away. He goes with his parents and two older sisters. The environment around the estate has changed due to climate change and the family's orchard is dying off. Overlaying this is Jay sharing a room with Chuan, who is the son of the estate's overseer. Chuan is a little bit older and significantly wiser and independent. The two boys begin to form a bond over Jay's stay even though their future together is very much up in the air. Meanwhile long held bonds between Jay's mother, father, and the overseer are strained considering the state of the land. This is a quiet, reflective novel that I wish had been a bit longer to stay with the characters.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux via NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.

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Thank you to NetGalley and FSG for this ARC. I enjoyed my time with this subtle yet brilliant novel, and I hope it finds a large audience upon publication.

Let me start by saying I'm what can only be described as an aficionado of queer fiction of all kinds, but queer coming-of-age novels are near and dear, especially when they're set in a place where the cultural antipathy to LGBTQ people and relationships is potent. This novel is that and much, much more. Tash Aw has created a story where every component works together to paint a picture of a family, their land, and their way of life are all imperiled by forces beyond their control.

The story primarily revolves around Jay, a Malaysian citizen of Chinese heritage. His parents, Sui and Jack, eked out a middle class life for their three children - daughters Lina and Yin and son Jack. Sui was a former student of Jack's where he taught as a middling university. Their lives together have become banal. Their eldest daughter, Lina, returned from university with a tattoo and a smoking habit, so intent is she on forging a life - any life - that isn't like her parents'.

When the novel opens, the family is en route to the farm they've inherited from Jack's family in southern Malaysia. The farm is in dire condition - diseased trees, drought-stricken crops, unreliable employees. Jay, at Jack's urging, commits to helping the farm manager, Fong, and his son, Chuan, with the small amount of work there is to be done. Their connection is instant, the the slow burn of their relationship is delightful. Aw unfurled it perfectly.

The decay of the land mirrors the unraveling of the family, the small-town way of life in the village surrounding the farm, and the way of life people like Fong and Chuan are consigned to. It's a heartbreaking truth infringing upon life across the globe.

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Aw’s newest, The South is set in southern Malaysia in the 1990s, where Jay (17) encounters his first love and his momma, Sui Ching, faces her past ghosts. Their nuclear family of five temporarily leaves Kuala Lumpur for the Johor Bahru countryside. They stay with Sui’s father-in-law’s extramarital son, Fong, and Fong’s 19-year-old son, Chuan. Jay joins Fong and Chuan on the farm and grows increasingly affectionate towards Chuan, who embodies a reckless youthfulness Jay admires. Chuan introduces Jay to drugs, smoking, and alcohol, and his unruly character allows Jay to explore his sexuality. In Sui’s father-in-law’s death, he passes the farm to her; however, the family also learns that the farm doesn’t produce the desired yield due to external factors, such as drought and an ailing economy. Sui’s husband, Jack, decides Sui ought to offload the farm for good. She grapples with her marriage to an unfaithful husband who stifles her freedom, though this loveless relationship has been her normal for decades, and any remaining embers of fight can’t seem to flame beyond a smoulder.

Aw’s writing hits the faint and light and nostalgic and heavy registers. The former rings throughout the novel in its simple undertaking: a book-smart, 17-year-old boy works on his family’s farm and falls in love (with his unofficial step-brother?). He lingers and desires to be chosen, yet he’s aware that his life is before him. The latter resounds when Aw emphasizes the tensions between farmers and the formally educated, women and men, children and parents, citizens and governments. For a strongly character-driven story, I couldn’t sympathize with Jay or Sui as much as I wanted to; Aw writes the narrative from both perspectives, and Sui’s sections include flashbacks and present-day tellings. Still, I’m interested to see Aw’s next instalments in his “series” (I’m not sure if that’s the right word) of four. I rate The South 2.5 stars.

My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an ARC. I also shared this review on GoodReads on May 20, 2025 (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7582712800).

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I really enjoyed this. The prose is pretty with some really beautiful messaging in here but the nonlinear storytelling sometimes distracted me and the constant alternating between different POVs made it hard to connect to any one specific character.

I’m now realizing that this book is one of a quartet and I’m so curious to see where these characters lives end up. Looking forward to the next one.

Thanks to NetGalley for the DRC.

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The South is a poignant novel that covers growing up in a rural country, with an amazing analyzation of queer youth.

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