Book Review: Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad

Even as I was reading Bangkok Wakes to Rain, I found myself thinking, How am I going to classify this book? It’s a novel but not exactly. It’s a collection of short stories but that’s not quite right either. It has sections that feel like pure poetry. It’s historical fiction and science fiction from one chapter to the next.

In the end, I want to call this a collection of linked short stories but I also recognize that’s not a perfect description. This is a book that move back and forth (though mostly forward) through time, moving between characters and steadily revealing their connections. The story doesn’t continue in a linear way from one chapter to the next, which made me think of linked short stories. But the same characters do show up in multiple places and the connections are easy to see. The chapters don’t work as standalone stories either; they rely on one another to build a larger narrative.

My description of all of this may make it sound like a mess but it’s truly not. The connections are easy to make and follow. The transitions are clear, even with minimal markings to situate the reader in time. The place remains largely the same – Bangkok, or Krungthep as many of the characters refer to it. In this way, the city itself is the central character. A lot of the story centres around one location – a home turned apartment building where various characters stories overlap.

As the book moves into the near future, Bangkok and its inhabitants become the victims of climate change and flooding changes the face of the city and forces the inhabitants to move and adapt. Interspersed are sections focusing on the impact of such changes on the animals and the environment and these chapters are beautifully written. As the plot moves into the future, Sudbanthad does an admirable job of balancing old and new. We see the introduction of new technologies, many of which can improve peoples’ lives. But we also see how these new technologies largely benefit the already wealthy and that the poorer population is still living at a subsistence level, often made worse by the flooding and environmental changes.

While I felt a couple of sections and characters probably could have been cut without changing the book much overall, I was very impressed by this novel and hope to read more from this author.