"Welcome me to the kingdom" by Mai Nardone

An audio book. I think the print copy would have been useful

• Labor (P, Nan, 1980) - When Nam's father died, she went to Bangkok. Her boyfriend P went too, escaping the paddies and shrimp farms, but in the city your can't see far, can't see your future. He's 18, staying in a hostel where the men watch porn tapes at night. He goes to pawnbrokers to get alcohol. He finds a job in a flower market - imported flowers dying after a few days, then gets sacked. Nam's staying with her cousin, who has a maid. P suspects that the maid works as a prostitute at night. Nam and P haven't yet had full sex.
• What you bargained for (Rik, Nam, P, 1980) - Nam picks up a American at a bar. He's been divorced for a year after 25 years of marriage having discovered that his wife had been unfaithful. P attacks the American but Nam etc fend him off. They marry after a year.
• Pink youth (Hasma, Nam, 1982) - Nam (married, but her husband doesn't want a child) goes to an abortionist, a Muslim who used to be a midwife, who had a misscarriage because of a Buddhist attack. She's still haunted by the daughter she never had.
• Exit Father (Ping, 1985) - Her father had his own business in old Chinese times. Now he beats his daughter. She wants to better herself. When 13, she learns about sex from a 14 y.o. lodger. She studies from photocopies of books. 10 years later she's in the USA having studied. Her father phones her for the first time in a long while because he's terminal and wants to tell her about his funeral hopes.
• Parade (Lara, Nam, Rik, 1991) - She's in a home for ill/bad kids. She does things she later regrets and self-harms to atone for them. "you've tuned your body to the wrong station" she tells her mother
• Stomping Ground (Benz, Tintin and Bredit, 1993) - They live in a slum, making protection again the monsoon with scrap. He finds a badminton racket and puts it across a river to catch cans/bottles to sell for recycling. With the money he buys a skirt for the any beautiful girl in the slum. She gives him sex in return. a policeman who'd grown up in the slum becomes interested in his enterprise, offering him later work, but he'll have to pay a tax.
• Goodbye Big E Bar (Pinky, Bredit, 1996) - Her father, an Elvis impersonator and sleasy bar owner, has died. She works there.
• Easy (Lara, Nam, Rik, 1997) - Her dad's American. She interprets when he and his local wife argue. He decides to return to the States for a while. She visits. Her mother phones. She says that father won't be returning. The mother asks to phone to him. She says no, In English her mother says "please".
• Feasts (Ping, Pinky, Bredit, 1999) - Staying with Pinky
• Captain Q is dead (Benz, Tintin, 2000) - In an abandoned cinmea TinTin and Benz (boys) cannibalize vehicles, sleeping on site. But the vehicles stop being delivered. They run out of money. It's hot. They have sex together for the first time. Someone appears, to set the place alight, saying it's easier for the police that way. I liked it.
• Make believe (Pinky, 2010) -
• Like us for a whiter you (Lara, Nam, 2010) - White complexions are better.
• Handsome Red (Tintin 2011) - Cock fighting. Why is the Russian vegan tagging along? There's match fixing. Reputations matter.
• Welcome to the kingdom (Lara, Benz, 2013) - Lara, in the USA to do a degree, runs out of money after 2 years. She's taken on by Mrs Anwa who teaches her about gambling (the games, but also about how to make money from gamblers). The kingdom is the male world of gambling dens.
• City of brass (Jimmy, Ping, 2016) - A long, good story. The theme may be "making narratives". Jimmy (working in a call centre by day, unsuccessfully writing journalistic essays by night) and Ping (worked for UN) end up in a bar where Chinese businessmen are entertained. Pinky works there
• English (P, Nam, 1974) - He's looking after his wheelchaired, dying mother. The punchline is that he's 12.
• The Tun Book brigade (Benz, Tintin, Lara, 2014) - Benz has spent 4 years as a volunteer corpse collector from accidents/fires. Things improve when they collect survivors too - they get donations and the profit from the hospitals who treat the survivors. There's competition. Benz scares them away with a gun. His friend wants to come along.

The dialogue sounds realistic enough, but the first-person voices use words like "proximate", "deprecated", "intimated" and "trove".

Many of the stories have a theme.

Other reviews

• goodreads
• spectrum culture (Like Goon Squad, Nardone’s collection time-skips, switches formats between chapters and hops all over the globe. ... Mardone’s clear penchant for imaginative and out-there ideas (where the quick zipping around is most similar to Egan’s work) is more than satisfactory if you’re looking for an eccentric and dizzying look at Thailand. But oftentimes they whiz by so quickly, and with little to no explanation the reader gets whiplash — dense scenarios and multiple characters pop up with every chapter, making it near-impossible to keep track of who is related to whom)
• Janet Brown
• Sindya Bhanoo (Some of the links between individual stories feel weaker than others, like patchy attempts to prevent the collection’s web from breaking; but the through lines do allow for a certain vastness that’s more often found in novels)