Summary

The first-person narrator, who remains anonymous, commences the novel with her graduation from a Taiwanese university in 1991. A Crocodile and prominent twentieth-century Japanese authors speak to the narrator, who prefaces the novel by acknowledging it as a story she herself is writing within the world of the novel.

Almost immediately, the protagonist shares her sexual preference for women: “Although I am a woman, I have a female prototype too” (7). She then introduced her romantic interest Shui Ling in a scene on a bus and foreshadowed their doomed relationship—the start of the novel’s narrative arc.

The protagonist expressed her distaste for her city: “People in this city are manufactured and canned, raised for the sole purpose of taking tests and making money” (10), adding, “Home was a credit card bill footed by Nationalist Party voters” (11). She also disclosed her emotional discontent in this setting...