Notes of a Crocodile

In late-1980s Taipei, a university student known as Lazi searches for a way to live with desires that place her outside the expectations surrounding her. Her attraction to the older Shui Ling becomes part of an unruly education in intimacy, isolation, and self-understanding. Around her, a circle of queer friends pursues its own unstable relationships and artistic ambitions. Diaries, fragments, satire, and the recurring figure of the crocodile interrupt any straightforward account of growing up. Through Lazi's perspective, the novel explores the pressure to conceal difference and the difficulty of finding a language for it, even among people who might understand.