Bangkok Wakes To Rain Pitchaya Sudbanthad

Submitted: 4th January 2020

Life in a city, Bangkok and rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad

Bangkok Wakes To Rain Pitchaya Sudbanthad – Have you ever watched the rain faling down a windowpane, seeing how each drop merges into one, how one might escape where others don’t, where one drop goes on a different path to all others?

This novel is a similar experience. All stories merge into one narrative of a city through the seasons and through the ages….

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Setting: The city of Bangok

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Bangkok Wakes To Rain Pitchaya Sudbanthad

The cover of this novel is captivating and it’s like putting up an umbrella – for when you open that cover, the stories, the images and more come flooding out, around your ears. You can hear the rain and the stories it brings. The sound of each droplet and the smell of it too. All the while, you stand feeling as if you are in a singular spot seeing so much of what is taking place around you.

It’s a novel that is at both a literary one full of various stories and voices, and a sci-fi/dystopian read of what could be in the future. That is some scope in one short novel, but it’s the author’s skill that allows you to time travel as smoothly as possible.

As you journey across centuries, the only constant is you, the reader, under that umbrella standing outside one building in Bangkok. That building sees people come and go, the building itself is changed and then is later neglected becoming a stain on the city. When the waters come however, life and history are washed away.

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At the same time as the setting, the characters ebb and flow through the pages. Nee and Mai are the sisters who we follow through the novel. From their student days, via the riots and other historical events, through to old age and the challenge of living in a submerged city.

It’s quite a read and I struggled to see how it would all come together at first. Would the rain, the submerged city and the sci-fi/dystopian angle would be what oil is to water. It’s as if when you close the novel, you take down that umbrella. It’s then that you see the pattern of rain all around you and the circle, the cycle of a city and its people all around you.

I realise I’ve used a lot of imagery to do with rain and umbrellas in this novel but it really does provide strong images and things to think about. An unusual read which I would call a breath of fresh air. The setting provides the story as well as being the story itself.