Aw allows much to remain unknown, uncertain, or unsaid in The South, and he does so beautifully, allowing readers to find the nuance within the very specific scenes ... A strong opening for Aw’s projected quartet, a quiet yet expansive novel, and it’s with great anticipation that I discovered that he is already hard at work on the second installment. If the first book is anything to go by, there is a lot to look forward to.
Gorgeous ... The sensuality of the prose is just one of the pleasures of Aw’s writing. With The South, he has crafted a story of yearning for autonomy, escape, financial independence and excitement that is suffused with sexual longing and the ache of nostalgia ... While I’m not convinced that The South needs a sequel, I’ll stay tuned. But for now, this shimmering, psychologically rich tale of first love and a family at a crossroads stands taller than those ill-fated tamarind trees.
Although the novel is an exquisite portrait of young love, its main theme is a different kind of highly relatable yearning: to live your life as you wish. In this first instalment, all the characters are imprisoned by custom, expectation, poverty or sometimes bonds of their own making. Whether they can break free will be revealed in the subsequent novels.
Sensitively drawn ... Rather than piling on twists like a Netflix miniseries, Aw develops a story that is more universal: about land ownership, the shadings of class and ethnic difference, legacy, globalism, youth and love.
With all that Aw adds to the coming out story trope, it’s interesting to note what he also withholds ... At times, Aw’s writing leans too heavily on minimalism and comes off merely plain and direct, lacking in suggestion or irony ... Reading The South is a pleasant diversion, much like recalling a summer vacation from one’s teenage years, with memories of youthful romance and sun-kissed pleasures.
It takes a while to orient yourself ... The novel never settles into a predictable shape, switching tantalisingly between family members, first and third-person narration, past and present tense. It’s a bit disorientating, but that’s the beauty of this spellbinding story about a group of people navigating a period of upheaval ... It’s a book that reveals Aw’s greatest strength as a novelist — an ability to subtly shift and unsettle your perceptions of characters and situations. The South deliberately resists easy resolutions. We must wait — and enjoy waiting.
Intense ... Shows Aw breaking into newly empathetic and impactful territory with his already considerable novelistic panache and artfulness ... I worry that after the vitality of this portrait of a moment, it might be tedious to read book after book about Jay and Chuan and their descendants as they age. But Aw has moved beyond his previous novels to discover a different kind of writing here, emerging as a Proustian chronicler of momentary bodily and mental experience writing on a compressed, exquisite scale.
Aw treats his characters with a fierce tenderness that suggests more than a touch of familiarity with the kinds of lives portrayed. The South is announced as the first in a quartet promising to explore one family’s story across turbulent times. It succeeds magnificently in its own right, however, as a moving portrait of how we all experience as extraordinary what we later learn was merely a first time.
