When published in her native Taiwan in 2017, Lin Yi-Han’s debut novel had a huge impact: the story of a 13-year-old girl, Fang Si-Chi, being groomed by a teacher at her “cram” school, it helped motor the country’s #MeToo movement and on screening tutors. But was also to be her only novel: Lin killed herself at 26, just months after publication. Her family revealed that the book was based on Lin’s own experience of sexual abuse.
An online manhunt for the real-life teacher – not unlike that following recently – ensued. Now, with the novel having sold more than a million copies worldwide, Jenna Tang’s translation arrives in English, capturing the acute honesty of Lin’s fictionalised account as well as her inventively image-laden style. It makes for a unique, if painful, reading experience.
The book offers a damning vision of sexist double standards and dangerous power imbalances within Taiwanese society The novel opens from the perspective of Liu Yi-Ting, Si-Chi’s best friend. The two girls – wealthy, sheltered, precociously well read – grew up inseparable. But when Si-Chi finally tells Yi-Ting that Teacher Lee, a married man 37 years older, is her “boyfriend”, Yi-Ting is horrified Not long after, Si-Chi goes insane – and the story starts over, from her perspective.
In her telling, Lin powerfully reveals not only how Teacher Lee manipulates Si-Chi into believing that coercive sex is a sign of love, how it is her fault for being “too beautiful”, .