Afterparties

Reviews / Votes

So's distinctive voice is ever-present: mellifluous, streetwise and slightly brash, at once cynical and bighearted...unique and quintessential * Sunday Times * witty and sharply expressed...the reader senses that [So] had a vast amount of soul and spirit in his account, and that he'd only just begun to draw from it...So's stories reimagine and reanimate the Central Valley, in the way that the polyglot stories in Bryan Washington's collection Lot reimagined Houston and Ocean Vuong's novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous allowed us to see Hartford in a fresh light. -- Dwight Garner * New York Times * [A] remarkable debut collection...The young people in Afterparties spill forth with language. His stories are chatty and crass, as characters incessantly tease one another, make jokes,...talk back and talk trash -- Hua Hsu * The New Yorker * A bright and fearless debut, full of heart, joy and unforgettable characters. -- Douglas Stuart The sheer richness and energy of So's narratives can't be overstated - his characters are full of love, and full of longing, and full of laughter, and full of the possibilities that life offers them and also the ones it hides. It's rare and magical and wild to find queer life, as it's actually lived, on the page - or on any pages - with all its multiplicities and creases and paradoxes and curves, and yet So lays it out for us, sparing nothing and giving everything. I was in awe through the entire collection -and you will be, too. Afterparties is an actual marvel. -- Bryan Washington, author of LOT and MEMORIAL A wildly energetic, heartfelt, original debut by a young writer of exceptional promise. These stories, powered by So's skill with the telling detail, are like beams of wry, affectionate light, falling from different directions on a complicated, struggling, beloved American community. -- George Saunders Afterparties weaves through a Cambodian-American community in the shadow of genocide, following the children of refugees as they grapple with the complexities of masculinity, class and family. Anthony Veasna So explores the lives of these unforgettable characters with bracing humour and startling tenderness. A stunning collection from an exciting new voice. -- Brit Bennett, author of THE VANISHING HALF The mind-frying hilarity of Anthony Veasna So's first book of fiction settles him as the genius of social satire our age needs now more than ever. Few writers can handle firm plot action and wrenching pathos in such elegant prose. This unforgettable new voice is at once poetic and laugh-out-loud funny. These characters kept talking to me long after I closed the book I'm destined to read again and cannot wait to teach. Anthony Veasna So is a shiny new star in literature's firmament and Afterparties his first classic. -- Mary Karr, author of THE LIARS' CLUB Anthony Veasna So is a terrific writer. These wild, complex and funny stories are brilliant in every way. They also speak in profound ways to this troubled American moment. One of the most exciting debuts of the past decade. -- Dana Spiotta, author of INNOCENTS AND OTHERS Karen Russell, Carmen Maria Machado, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - you can count on one hand the authors of this century whose debut short-story collections are as prodigious and career-making as Afterparties. This lovingly specific, history-haunted comedy of Cambodian-American manners should put Anthony Veasna So on smart readers' radar to stay. -- Jonathan Dee, author of THE PRIVILEGES