Not what you think. Or, sort of what you think. The unfinished but mostly finished and completed/compiled by the late author’s daughter novel about, well, “yellow fever.” White men who mostly/only date/pursue Asian women and the kind of dangerous sexualization and fetishism associated with that. Which is all very awkward for a guy like me who is married to a woman from Thailand (a country which has its own unique place in the pantheon of cultures creepily fetishized by White and western men).

It’s an excellent book, with some well-drawn characters and its Baltimore location felt very real to someone who has lived there and visits often. It suffered, of course, at the end, because, presumably, she would have fleshed it out more than the brief epilogue-like fragments that made up the last sections of book.

Also… classical music plays a big role, so, if you like a nice string quartet, you can hear the music in your head sometimes while reading this book.