The delightful, fantastic, fabulous and unfortunately posthumous second novel by Katherine Min ... There's hardly a sentence in this book — feverish and funny and razor-sharp — that does not merit quoting ... Wonderful.
Inspired by Lolita, but with an Asian fetishist in the role of Humbert Humbert and the objects of his objectification given voice, The Fetishist presents a tightly crafted examination of racial and sexual politics that is at once nuanced and no-holds-barred ... Min unspools the tale in short chapters, alternating her third-person omniscient narration primarily among Alma, Daniel, and Kyoko, whose perspectives we dip into and out of in moments of free indirect discourse befitting a Victorian novel. Long, winding sentences filled with wordplay unfold virtuosically ... It is Kyoko's white-hot rage that forces this confrontation, but her chapters are the weakest in the novel. Kyoko's perspective is blinkered and juvenile, her grief largely unexamined because it has 'twisted to hate, hate hammered to anger, until the anger, the hate, and the grief had become grotesquely fused.' While Min does give Kyoko a brief moment of revelation toward the novel's end, it feels unconvincingly pat ... There is something ironic about a dead woman feeling like the missing center in a posthumously published novel.
Min’s characters are flawed and lovable—even the villains. Ultimately, the story rages against and holds space for the infuriating experience of loving a villain. A farce that deftly tackles shame, grief, parents, chronic illness, colonialism, and the hollowness of enmity in a systemically unjust world? Magic. Min’s wit and wisdom live on.
Darkly funny, strangely poignant and sometimes startlingly vicious, The Fetishist is a wonderful novel from an author we lost too soon, and a sweeping yet intimate statement on the impacts of racism and sexism on Asian American women ... There’s not a simple narrative here, no firm sense of right and wrong that we can apply to every page. Instead, these complicated, messy characters are lent warmth and gravity in each word, each moment.
Balancing biting humor, wrenching despair, and unexpected redemption, Min radiantly succeeds in delivering that promised (mostly, cautiously) happy ending.
Spiky ... Min’s emphasis on Karmody’s redemption in the final act is a curious and somewhat frustrating turn, given that the novel initially sets out to restore a sense of humanity to the women whose lives have been squeezed by stereotypes. Still, the technicolor, Tarantino-esque crime plot can be great fun. This has its moments.
This novel is framed as a fairy tale, perhaps to relieve the concern that these stories, gaping with grief, have sealed a bit too neatly by the end. Still, it is sensitive and insightful, and its detangling of the knot that is racism, otherness, and desire is nothing short of expert. A tenderly told tale of the losses that wreck and redeem us.
