books: Five bananas ripe with problems
Andrew Yang, Peak Staff

Call me stuck in a genre, but most of what I read is science fiction and fantasy. I tend to avoid anything related to "Generation X" angst. (Douglas Coupland stay back! I mean it!) Of course this time it's "Chinese-Canadian" Gen-X angst that piques my interest. What the hell - it'll keep me away from Usenet for a while.

A funny thing about reviews is how people gauge the readability of a book by someone else's opinion. Anyway, long story short, Terry Woo's Banana Boys is a book about nothing, "a day in the life" so to speak, without Jerry Seinfeld's incessant whining. It's a not-so-subtle trip though the minds of five Canadianised twenty-something Chinese males. They're all "yellow on the outside, white on the inside," just like bananas. There's Luke the deejay/activist, Dave the bitter code jockey, Sheldon the all-around goofball and nice guy, Mike the reluctant grad student and hopeless romantic, and Rick, the one who has it all - or so we think.

I would have to say that Woo's novel hits pretty close to home because I would fit right in to this book. From Dave's frustration with Asian women: "I mean they're either too studious or too fobbish or too materialistic or only interested in big white guys named Steve or Darryl."

Rick's success represents the holy grail of achievement, at least in his mind. He has a gorgeous, yet high-maintenance, girlfriend, ambition, and loads of cash, and the rare ability to exist in both Chinese and Canadian society, while the others are caught in some sort of cultural limbo. But it's all angst, baby. What better way than a funeral to start it all off? A breakup? It's been done before, hasn't it? Still, relationships are always a source of angsty goodness. Relationships, or to put it more aptly, sexloverelationships, keep this book going. Just add alcohol, pie charts, and a Venn diagram and you have a winner.

It's a good first novel for Terry Woo, but it just feels a little too Canadian. Maybe it has to do with some obscure Canadian content requirement, but Woo seems to throw around lots of names and a few bits of Ontarian Canadiana. A Robbie Robertson here, a little Cowboy Junkies there, lots of Molson's beer and something about Sarnia. I probably missed a Sudbury Saturday Night somewhere, but I'm just being sarcastic.

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