MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewAlready drawing comparisons to Sally Rooney’s work, Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan, has many of the familiar tropes of the \'millennial novel\' covered: Jealousy and obsession, love and late capitalism, sex and the internet all come whirling together in a wry and bracing tale of class and privilege ... Ava is hyper-verbal and exacting, and Dolan’s writing excels when Ava turns her analytical eye on the intersections between English syntax, zeitgeist technology and interpersonal relationships ... Dolan captures perfectly the nauseating insecurity of growing up today ... The novel is shot through with moments of...startling self-awareness ... Unfortunately, Dolan’s superficial evocation of [Hong Kong] is conjured mostly through Instagram latte art geotagged on fashionable streets. The actual experiences of local people her age have no effect whatsoever on Ava, the details of their lives mentioned, by the author, only in passing. Absent the textures of a real city that is sharply divided along generational, ideological and class lines, Dolan’s novel could have taken place in any other major Asian metropolis ... Those who’ve spent time in Hong Kong can’t help wondering what it’s like to be among the Anglophone transplants who work and party there. Are they as insensitive and indifferent as they seem to the foreign city they call home? The answer Exciting Times seems to offer is yes, in this case they are just as shallow and myopic as one would assume.
