And then there are Tun Tun and Zhi Rou, two female students – younger than Lazi and who also form a messy romantic pair – that Lazi feels an immediate affinity for and takes under her wing.Īnd finally, there's Xiao Fan, a woman five years Lazi's senior. First there's Meng Sheng and Chu Kuang, two young gay males, whose off-and-on relationship isn't dissimilar to Lazi's and Shui Ling's. Most of the book's other principal characters come in pairs.

Ling appears at intervals throughout the book, but precious little is ever resolved in their relationship. Though they're powerfully attracted to one another, Lazi continually pushes Shui Ling away, and their failure to achieve a steady, enduring connection is a source of great pain for both of them. At the heart of this conflict is Shui Ling – a female student slightly older than Lazi – and the back and forth, ever-tumultuous relationship she and Lazi share.

The book's main conflict is Lazi's reluctance to fully accept herself as what she's long known herself to be: a lesbian. The story more or less chronologically follows Lazi's time at college, which coincides with her personal development. I'm constantly on the border of life and death, waiting for something to come along and push me over the edge.' To quote just one passage that demonstrates the narrator's general attitude towards life: '…every time I fight my way out, the outside world just blocks my path again. The book's narrator, who goes by the nickname Lazi, is a self-hating, sexually conflicted young woman who sometimes carries out acts of self-harm.

The tragic specifics of Qiu's life (which the reader will likely be familiar with, as they're included in the book's author-biography) mean that one begins reading 'Note of a Crocodile' with some expectations – and, indeed, these expectations are quickly met. The book also, due to her suicide at the age of 26 in 1995, makes up half of her novelistic oeuvre her second and final novel, 'Last Words from Montmartre,' wasn't released until after her death. Originally published in 1994 – although an English translation wasn't available until earlier this year – 'Notes of a Crocodile' is the first novel by Qiu Miaojin, an outspoken lesbian writer who was born in Changhua County, Taiwan.

Notes of a crocodile