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Summary
Summary
"This debut novel about an Irish expat millennial teaching English and finding romance in Hong Kong is half Sally Rooney love triangle, half glitzy Crazy Rich Asians high living--and guaranteed to please." --Vogue
A RECOMMENDED BOOK FROM:
The New York Times Book Review * Vogue * TIME * Marie Claire * Elle * O, the Oprah Magazine * The Washington Post * Esquire * Harper's Bazaar * Bustle * PopSugar * Refinery 29 * LitHub * Debutiful
An intimate, bracingly intelligent debut novel about a millennial Irish expat who becomes entangled in a love triangle with a male banker and a female lawyer
Ava, newly arrived in Hong Kong from Dublin, spends her days teaching English to rich children.
Julian is a banker. A banker who likes to spend money on Ava, to have sex and discuss fluctuating currencies with her. But when she asks whether he loves her, he cannot say more than "I like you a great deal."
Enter Edith. A Hong Kong-born lawyer, striking and ambitious, Edith takes Ava to the theater and leaves her tulips in the hallway. Ava wants to be her--and wants her.
And then Julian writes to tell Ava he is coming back to Hong Kong... Should Ava return to the easy compatibility of her life with Julian or take a leap into the unknown with Edith?
Politically alert, heartbreakingly raw, and dryly funny, Exciting Times is thrillingly attuned to the great freedoms and greater uncertainties of modern love. In stylish, uncluttered prose, Naoise Dolan dissects the personal and financial transactions that make up a life--and announces herself as a singular new voice.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Dolan's wry, tender debut, a young Dubliner navigates her love life and sexuality. Ava, 22, has a murky friendship with London-born and Oxford-educated banker Julian, in his late 20s, whom she'd met at a bar during her first month in Hong Kong, where she teaches English. They treat each other with ironic regard, speaking mostly in quips about his privilege and their mutual maybe-attraction. Ava moves into his flat, and they soon start sleeping together. The novel picks up speed after Julian travels to London for work and Ava meets Edith Zhang, who is both different from Julian in many ways--stylish, female, a Hong Kong local--and similar--boarding school, Cambridge, a well-off family. On Ava's 23rd birthday, Edith kisses her, and they fall headlong into an earnest, garrulous, and secret love, as Edith isn't out to her family. When Julian writes to say he will be returning in a month, Ava, who hasn't disclosed the true nature of her and Julian's relationship to Edith, must decide what she really wants. Dolan starts slowly, but gradually the ironic distancing of Ava's narration is pierced by questions from Ava's students and her transformative relationship with Edith. Dolan's smart, brisk debut works as charming comedy of manners, though it packs less of a punch when it comes to class consciousness. (June)
Guardian Review
Already drawing comparisons to Sally Rooney's work, "Exciting Times," by Naoise Dolan, has many of the familiar tropes of the "millennial novel" covered: Jealousy and obsession, love and late capitalism, sex and the internet all come whirling together in a wry and bracing tale of class and privilege. The protagonist, Ava, is an intelligent, 22-year-old loner who moves from her native Dublin to Hong Kong to teach English, with no discernible qualifications other than being white. Not long after her arrival, she finds herself on a lunch date with Julian, an Oxford-educated British banker in his late 20s. She hopes he'll be as impressed by her youth and attractiveness as she is by his salary, which she has Googled, thoroughly. "I wasn't good at most things but I was good at men," Ava confides in the reader, "and Julian was the richest man I'd ever been good at." Soon they are sleeping together, and Ava moves into Julian's flat. She is highly attuned both to the power dynamics at play ("do you want me to depend on you?" she asks him) and to her moral predicament, as she adds up how much money she is saving on rent, as well as on the clothes and meals Julian pays for with the funds he doesn't know what to do with. Ava admires how Julian handles his advantages, how "he could calmly note where he benefited from unfairness - not self-indulgently like I often did, but factually." As their undefined relationship goes on, she begins to develop her own brand of romantic longing, which begins with a desire for his life of privilege. "I loved him - potentially," she thinks. "That, or I wanted to be him." Ava is hyper-verbal and exacting, and Dolan's writing excels when Ava turns her analytical eye on the intersections between English syntax, zeitgeist technology and interpersonal relationships: "Because I lacked warmth, I was mainly assigned grammar classes, where children not liking you was a positive performance indicator. I found this an invigorating respite from how people usually assessed women." By contrast, Ava's written correspondences - social media posts and emails she labors over, analyzes, doesn't send or sends by accident - become increasingly vulnerable in their disclosures as the book moves along. They form a digital counterbalance to Ava's aloof and guarded in-person presence, and through this duality Dolan captures perfectly the nauseating insecurity of growing up today. Yet like many millennials, Ava exhausts the bulk of her mental energy on her bank account. "You're not easily pleased with how other people put sentences together," Julian accuses, "but when it comes to money, you've got no taste. And no squeamishness - about asking for it, discussing it, hoarding it." Ava doesn't flinch. The novel is shot through with moments of such startling self-awareness as this. While Julian is back in London for six months, Ava meets Mei Ling "Edith" Zhang, a corporate lawyer from a well-off Hong Kong family. Edith has much in common with Julian: an Oxbridge pedigree and a high-powered, high-paying job. "I wanted her life," Ava thinks. "I worried this might endanger our friendship, but so far it seemed to be facilitating it." Their friendship eventually moves through phases of awkward flirtation into a romantic affair, taking place mostly in Julian's apartment, and in secret, as Edith is not out to her parents. But Julian's impending return means Ava must decide not so much between her lovers as between Edith and the expensive flat that she doesn't pay for. Sure, her salary is "good compared to the locals'," but ending things with Julian would mean she'd have to, gasp, live like they do, "in coffin homes." The novel takes place a few years after the 2014 Umbrella Movement, peaceful demonstrations that galvanized Hong Kong's youth, who were demanding open elections, in a renewed spirit of protest. Unfortunately, Dolan's superficial evocation of the island is conjured mostly through Instagram latte art geotagged on fashionable streets. The actual experiences of local people her age have no effect whatsoever on Ava, the details of their lives mentioned, by the author, only in passing. Absent the textures of a real city that is sharply divided along generational, ideological and class lines, Dolan's novel could have taken place in any other major Asian metropolis. None of the English-speaking characters seek to venture beyond their established social circles, where even brief references to elections or the conditions of domestic workers are dismissed as "white savior-ish." They barely notice the Chinese characters on street signs, let alone try to understand them. Those who've spent time in Hong Kong can't help wondering what it's like to be among the Anglophone transplants who work and party there. Are they as insensitive and indifferent as they seem to the foreign city they call home? The answer "Exciting Times" seems to offer is yes, in this case they are just as shallow and myopic as one would assume. After a local waiter replies to her English greeting in Cantonese, an irritated Edith points out one of Ava's blind spots: "You're not noticing because you're white," she says, "people see me and assume I'm from here." Edith might let Ava off the hook, but why should today's reader do the same?
Kirkus Review
A young millennial finds herself in a love triangle with a man and woman. In Irish author Dolan's debut novel, 22-year-old narrator Ava relocates from Dublin to Hong Kong to teach grammar at a school for English-language learners. Noting that the school hires only white people, she remarks: "Like sharks' teeth, teachers dropped out and were replaced." From the jump, Ava approaches the world with cleareyed humor. In her first months as an expat, she meets Julian--a 28-year-old English banker--who seems aloof about everything except his job. As they fall into a quasi-relationship, Ava moves into his apartment, where Julian allows her to live rent-free. When Julian leaves for London on an extended work project, Ava meets Edith, a Hong Kong local and ambitious lawyer. With Ava still living in Julian's apartment, she and Edith fall into a quick friendship that evolves into a relationship. Telling neither the full truth about the other, Ava finds herself falling in love with Edith. During an evening stroll, she thinks: "I didn't need to know how other women went about being together. I could see it forever, for us: walking through cities, laughing at things that weren't that funny." When Julian tells her he's returning to Hong Kong, she must navigate the precarious situation she's inadvertently created. Ava--who has struggled throughout the novel to be vulnerable in often maddening ways--must make a decision: live comfortably or live truthfully. Politics, class, and race anxiously hover over the entire novel. After confiding that she called her college savings account her "abortion fund," she says: "I knew some women who saved with their friends, and they all helped whoever was unlucky. But I didn't trust anyone....The richer I got, the harder it would be for anyone to force me to do anything." Dolan's preoccupation with power is often couched in humor but always expertly observed. Her elegantly simple writing allows her ideas and musings to shine. A refreshingly wry and insightful debut. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Having recently uprooted herself to teach English in Hong Kong, young Irishwoman Ava befriends English banker Julian before becoming his lover, then his roommate, and, pointedly, not his girlfriend, though she's pretty sure she'd like to be. When Julian leaves for an extended work trip, another new friendship begins, also turning romantic, but this time it's clear: Ava and Edith, a lawyer and Hong Kong native, are girlfriends, and they're in love. Ava tells neither Julian nor Edith the full truth about the other, leading to certain tension when Julian returns. An excerpt of this novel was published in The Stinging Fly, edited by Dolan's fellow Irish novelist Sally Rooney; Rooney's fans should seek this out for its volleying dialogue, rich interiority, and perceptive writing on money, politics, and class. This has plenty of singular charms, too. Ava's grammar lessons for her young students provide a perch for some of Dolan's joyous linguistic backflips and canny cultural critiques. Dolan wheels readers deftly through Ava's thought spirals, too. "I'd never know if other people were as graphic as me in their daydreams and we all just pretended we weren't." A clever and deep novel of sex, connection, and the complexities of self-expression.
Library Journal Review
DEBUT This delightfully sardonic, insightful debut picks apart life at the whims of the economy, love, and self-sabotage. Ava has moved from Ireland to Hong Kong to teach English to children, a job that's so intense, she is expected not to go to the bathroom all day. She remains very much of working-class Dublin in her nervous dealings with the English and rich Irish people she meets but takes up with one of them, Julian, a stiffly unloving and Eton-ified banker. Ava then falls for a kind Hong Kong woman, Edith, but can't be honest with either partner, let alone herself, about her feelings or desires for the future. The first two sections of the book, which portray Ava's two relationships, are the most satisfying. The last section looks at the love triangle and can be frustrating. VERDICT Overall, this surprising novel is believable and piercingly written, with many hilarious lines, such as when Ava wonders if a nasty English character is "a real person or three Mitford sisters in a long coat." For fans of Rachel Khong's Goodbye, Vitamin. [See Prepub Alert, 12/2/19.]--Henrietta Verma, Credo Reference, New York, NY
