Pink Mountain on Locust Island by Jamie Marina Lau
"Outside like a microwave hum. Through my window are blue lights and high heels. People going in to play on the machines. Dad is on an alprazolam ride. Me on a cyber trip. A bloating orchestra and a timid man’s voice from the television in the living room.”
Pink Mountain on Locust Island (2018) is the debut novel from Melbourne writer, Jamie Marina Lau. A gritty and modern noir-meets-coming-of-age narrative, Lau takes us on a journey of what it means to exist on the fringes of society through the lens of someone who sits at the crossroads: a teenage Asian girl.
Our narrator is Monk, a second-generation Asian teenager living in an unnamed city in the Western world (presumably Melbourne, Australia). She lives with her father in a tiny apartment in Chinatown. Her mother left them years before, and her sister is married to a seemingly disinterested and uncultured Westerner. Monk's life is dominated by her bitter and somewhat controlling father until she meets Santa Coy in an internet cafe. 15-year-old Monk is immediately enamoured by the older boy, who gives her his laptop and they begin a dialogue - of sorts - over email. Santa Coy has artistic notions, and Monk introduces him to her father (a failed artist himself). The three of them share a similar sense of failure, but also a palpable hunger to break out of the meaningless routines that dominate their lives. However, Santa Coy and her father develop a bond that sees Monk pushed to the outskirts of their schemes.
Perturbed by her father’s escalating dominance of Santa Coy, and lacking her own sense of identity or social connections, Monk rebels by ingratiating herself with the seedy underworld of the city. Never quite grasping the situations in which she finds herself, Monk sinks deeper into the fray with dire, violent consequences.
This book is a wild ride: told in short, sharp, tumbling chapters, jumping across details with the impressionistic mind of a teenager, while still offering a detailed and sensory story. Some sentences feel like reading the bright, neon lights of a city coming to life after dark:
"Make or Break City flashing across the train's window. Everybody in here is a faulty battery; black coat slumps. The sky is a purple haze of lights from buildings, and white birds circle public soccer grounds."
This is an incredibly sophisticated story with, in the words of the blurb, “fizzing, staccato and claustrophobic prose” - and it’s true, the prose and dialogue alike simply fizzes off the page. Lau was twenty when Pink Mountain was published, and references to her youth and her unique writing style have seen this book frequently reviewed as a generational novel, one for the “digital age” and the “digital natives.” However, categorising the book this way removes a layer of complexity it is more than due. Lau writes with maturity and restraint. There is a complex - dare I say it formulaic - approach to the way Lau tells her tale, and I've no doubt she is the only one with the precise formula to deliver such a telling. It is a style of writing of which I have never experienced before and it was exciting to read because of that.
Amongst all the coming-of-age and teenage angst, Lau dives deep into the sense of fracture that comes from living through the challenges of a diasporic life, and a desperate sense of what we will do to find acceptance, attention and acknowledgement. Lau has described Monk as the “most sincere female character” she’s created, and this definitely shines through in the novel. Monk is an incredibly authentic and engrossing composite of teenage angst, joy, confusion, curiosity and strength.
With an incredible eye for detail, fluid language, and an authentic voice, Lau's debut novel is not to be missed.
Elaine Mead is a freelance writer and book reviewer, currently residing in Hobart, Tasmania. She is passionate about the ways we can use literature to learn from our experiences to become more authentic versions of ourselves and obsessed with showing you photos of her Dachshund puppy. You can find her online under @wordswithelaine.
