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Home Sickness
The characters in these ten stories are longing for escape and attempt to leave home, but inevitably and perhaps ironically find themselves homesick. Chih-Ying Lay, a Montreal-based expatriate from Taiwan familiar with both homesickness and home sickness, probes our desperate need for home, often matched with an equally desperate need to get away from it. Lay's characters are outsiders, whether queer, indigenous, unloved or lost, and each discovers that home is not the sanctuary it was meant to be. Sometimes, they find a place to call their very own, as if to tell the reader: You can, too.
"Good writers create worlds--great writers, glittering constellations. Chih-Ying Lay's debut collection makes my head spin. Diamond-hard, harrowing, melancholy, bawdy, erudite, his stories stream with blood, sperm, tears, piss, sweat, passion, loss. A medical student lovingly dissects the body of a dear friend who was a political dissident; a twisted sexual triangle develops between an artist, her nine-year-old son, and a day labourer; a young man whose mother is in chemo develops sympathetic symptoms all his own. By turns blunt, cynical, yearning, delicate, wounding, HOME SICKNESS is the work of a true original. As one queer writer to another, I salute an astonishing new talent."--Will Aitken
"Good writers create worlds--great writers, glittering constellations. Chih-Ying Lay's debut collection makes my head spin. Diamond-hard, harrowing, melancholy, bawdy, erudite, his stories stream with blood, sperm, tears, piss, sweat, passion, loss. A medical student lovingly dissects the body of a dear friend who was a political dissident; a twisted sexual triangle develops between an artist, her nine-year-old son, and a day labourer; a young man whose mother is in chemo develops sympathetic symptoms all his own. By turns blunt, cynical, yearning, delicate, wounding, HOME SICKNESS is the work of a true original. As one queer writer to another, I salute an astonishing new talent."--Will Aitken
220 pages, Paperback
Published March 14, 2020
40 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 6, 2025
So hard to give a concise rating when this book is a collection of short stories- some that were very solid, some that started promising and ended on just a 'what the fuck did I just read' note. My favorite stories were "Red Dragonfly", "The Seafaring French Horn", and "Quartet".
Before I dig in, I will preface by saying that the author truly shone when it came to his grisly and visceral biological sensations and descriptions. I love me a gnarly exploration of emotions through body horror, his scientist's background truly pulled through with that.
Now for my main issue with the overall collection- it is absolutely a shock-provoking series of stories, but for the purpose of what I beg? Here is an unnecessarily deep dive into notes I made while reading the book:
- should’ve been called head sickness: these characters sick in the HEAD
- these ppl are losers lowkey
- disjointed characters, contrived metaphors
This book features many a lost soul as the main character, aching/yearning/drifting about life for something. That is a sentiment I completely resonate with. But then when you dive into many of their strange psyches, you lose me on what makes them relatable/redeemable. That is why many of them felt very disjointed and underdeveloped, doing fucked up things for no apparent reason. In addition, many a metaphor was used in a simply clunky and obvious way that was the definition of telling instead of showing IMO.
- very smooth and easy to read through at least
- WHY SO MUCH INCEST. LITERALLY WHY.
These notes are all quite self-explanatory lol. I understand the importance of literature as a mechanism for delving into taboo topics, but the way it came across in some stories just felt incessant and icky- especially in the way the female characters were treated. They really only acted as either vessels for the self-development of the male characters, or as women whose lives were intrinsically linked and inseparable from the men in their lives. Some may argue that this only occurs because every character, no matter the gender is marked by the lingering past and familial relations. But man, the lingering ick I feel at the characterization of these female characters reminds me of the fact that queer men are capable of misogyny as well!
- keeps switching back and forth between narration styles in this one, very interesting
- expected more nostalgia at the forefront of the stories, or melancholy at least- these emotions don't come through as much as I'd expect them to
Also self-explanatory- I will say I really appreciated the author's experimentation with differing narration styles that weave in and out of each other. Nostalgia and melancholy are certainly present, but I just did not feel they were strongly conveyed through the text as much as they were told to the reader outright.
Overall, I find Chih-Ying Lay and the body of diaspora literature, especially the queer diaspora that he embodies to be an incredibly promising field. I genuinely enjoyed the short stories highlighted above, and various other elements throughout the other unnamed ones. But when your plot is contingent upon contentious and controversial characters, I will match that with a contentious and controversial deep-dive of a review.
Before I dig in, I will preface by saying that the author truly shone when it came to his grisly and visceral biological sensations and descriptions. I love me a gnarly exploration of emotions through body horror, his scientist's background truly pulled through with that.
Now for my main issue with the overall collection- it is absolutely a shock-provoking series of stories, but for the purpose of what I beg? Here is an unnecessarily deep dive into notes I made while reading the book:
- should’ve been called head sickness: these characters sick in the HEAD
- these ppl are losers lowkey
- disjointed characters, contrived metaphors
This book features many a lost soul as the main character, aching/yearning/drifting about life for something. That is a sentiment I completely resonate with. But then when you dive into many of their strange psyches, you lose me on what makes them relatable/redeemable. That is why many of them felt very disjointed and underdeveloped, doing fucked up things for no apparent reason. In addition, many a metaphor was used in a simply clunky and obvious way that was the definition of telling instead of showing IMO.
- very smooth and easy to read through at least
- WHY SO MUCH INCEST. LITERALLY WHY.
These notes are all quite self-explanatory lol. I understand the importance of literature as a mechanism for delving into taboo topics, but the way it came across in some stories just felt incessant and icky- especially in the way the female characters were treated. They really only acted as either vessels for the self-development of the male characters, or as women whose lives were intrinsically linked and inseparable from the men in their lives. Some may argue that this only occurs because every character, no matter the gender is marked by the lingering past and familial relations. But man, the lingering ick I feel at the characterization of these female characters reminds me of the fact that queer men are capable of misogyny as well!
- keeps switching back and forth between narration styles in this one, very interesting
- expected more nostalgia at the forefront of the stories, or melancholy at least- these emotions don't come through as much as I'd expect them to
Also self-explanatory- I will say I really appreciated the author's experimentation with differing narration styles that weave in and out of each other. Nostalgia and melancholy are certainly present, but I just did not feel they were strongly conveyed through the text as much as they were told to the reader outright.
Overall, I find Chih-Ying Lay and the body of diaspora literature, especially the queer diaspora that he embodies to be an incredibly promising field. I genuinely enjoyed the short stories highlighted above, and various other elements throughout the other unnamed ones. But when your plot is contingent upon contentious and controversial characters, I will match that with a contentious and controversial deep-dive of a review.
Displaying 1 of 1 review