Waylaid

by Ed Lin

2002

Status

Available

Call number

813.6

Genres

General Fiction

Fiction

Publication

Kaya Press

DDC/MDS

813.6

813.6

Description

Fiction. Literature. HTML:Waylaid is the story of a Chinese American boy who struggles to grow up in the grip of an overcharged sexual environment. With a daily routine that involves renting out rooms to johns and hookers at his parents' sleazy hotel, the narrator loses his grip on concepts of friendship, family and childhood. As he pursues his all-consuming quest to lose his virginity, issues of race, class and sex cripple his sense of self-worth. It is a story told with a Gen-X-style bleak humor that doesn't pander to conventional notions of immigrant narrative. Waylaid doesn't cut a wide swath through Asian American literature. It is a switchblade in the gut to stories of over-achievement and success in America that ignore the human cost. This is the eBook edition of Waylaid, originally published in print form in May 2002.… (more)

Media reviews

Booklist

The unnamed narrator of Lin’s brilliant debut is the 12-year-old son of Taiwanese immigrant parents who own a rundown motel on the New Jersey coast. Catering to impecunious old men in the winter, to higher-paying “Bennys“ (stands for Bayonne, Elizabeth, Newark, and New York--these

customers’ hometowns) in the summer, and to hookers’ johns year-round, it is no place to grow up in, but it is what his parents have chosen to succeed in, in America. The boy works the front desk and does chores whenever he isn’t in school or asleep. Newly postpubescent, big for his age, and egged on by a friendly Benny (“Girls were all over me when I was like eight,” he boasts), the boy makes getting laid his prime objective between Benny seasons. As he progresses toward his goal, Lin carefully reveals, through him, what making it in America can entail for even bright, ambitious newcomers. Awash in a sea of stupidity and venality, the boy, neither stupid nor venal, seems bent on more than hauling his ashes, and after his father suffers a stroke, and relatives come from Taiwan to keep the motel afloat, he looks like a prevailer, not just a survivor. Lin’s unsentimental, purely realist--not naturalist, not socialist, not postmodernist--novel raises hopes that American fiction may yet grow up.

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The Japan Times

This terrific first novel by Chinese-American writer Ed Lin revolves around a 12-year-old coming of age in New Jersey in the 1970s, burdened by his virginity and motivated mainly by the desire to lose it. This is not your geeky pocket-protector Asian protagonist, and it might not be the "model

immigrant" story some people want to be told, but it is the real story people most need to hear. It could easily be a depressing tale, but Lin is as equally adept at humor as he is at pathos. The novel is written in a tone of deceptive flatness -- no Zen philosophizing or romantic yearnings here, but the realism fits the scene. Losing one's virginity is an apt metaphor for fitting in, being accepted, and growing up, and Lin is well aware of the double meaning of the title. By turns crude, depressing, desperate and funny, "Waylaid" is a raw and honest portrayal of a boy's transformation to adulthood, an Asian-American hybrid of "Catcher in the Rye" and "Portnoy's Complaint."

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User reviews

LibraryThing member kidzdoc

This excellent coming of age novel is narrated by the unnamed son of Taiwanese immigrants, who own a rundown hotel in a forgettable town on the Jersey Shore. His father earned an engineering degree in Taiwan, but was unable to keep his job in the US. He spends his summers, as do most of the

residents of the town, catering to young vacationers from North Jersey and New York, who tear up the hotel and town and pollute the beaches with beer bottles, cigarette butts and condoms. During the rest of the year, the hotel is populated by lonely old men and hookers turning tricks. He starts obsessing about having sex, spurred by the porn magazines that he picks up while cleaning the hotel's rooms, and he engages in humorous and mostly futile attempts to get any of girls he meets to sleep with him. Although he is a good student, he despises almost everyone, especially his parents, who eat stinky Chinese food and make him work like a dog, his school mates, who isolate and make fun of him because of his race, and the hotel's guests, who punch holes in the walls and treat him with condescension. There is hope for him, as his scheme to get his cute classmate and girlfriend to sleep with him in one of the hotel's empty rooms may come to fruition before long.

[Waylaid] is probably the best coming of age novel I've read, as it authentically portrays the daily frustrations and small victories of a teenage boy trying to fit into a town that doesn't want or respect him, and whose parents don't understand him. The regular low-level discrimination he has to put up with as an Asian-American ring true, as do his parents' struggles to survive in an unfriendly town. I did not find this to be an overly depressing read, as the author does not dwell too long on the narrator's negative experiences and frustrations, and humor and honesty are present throughout this well written work. I'll definitely look for more works by this gifted author, and would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in coming of age literature.

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LibraryThing member delphica

Eh.

I wasn't really clear on what this book is trying to do. As it opens, the 12 year old narrator is helping his parents operate a run-down hotel on the Jersey Shore, and his view of women and sex is mostly formed by his encounters with men bringing cheap prostitutes to the cut-rate rooms. That's

pretty grim, but not necessarily bad as a set-up. And then ... that's it. That's the entire book. The writing's not bad, but I have a dire suspicion that the point of the book might be tha...more Eh.

I wasn't really clear on what this book is trying to do. As it opens, the 12 year old narrator is helping his parents operate a run-down hotel on the Jersey Shore, and his view of women and sex is mostly formed by his encounters with men bringing cheap prostitutes to the cut-rate rooms. That's pretty grim, but not necessarily bad as a set-up. And then ... that's it. That's the entire book. The writing's not bad, but I have a dire suspicion that the point of the book might be that nothing changes, which is a yawner.

Grade: D

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LibraryThing member Othemts

A bleak novel about a boy growing up in a sleazy road-side hotel and losing his childhood in a world dominated by work and sex. It's well written but I found it depressing.

LibraryThing member zmagic69

Definitely not your average coming of age story. It is narrated by a 12 year Chinese American boy who is tasked with helping to run his parents motel at the Jersey shore (think Asbury Park, not Cape May) in the early 80's and who is determined to lose his virginity.
The motel is a complete dump,

that other than during the summer, basically rents rooms by the hour.
The story is very crude, and also very funny.

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