Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go (Tin House, 2023)
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The electric, unsettling, and often surreal stories in LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO explore the alienated, technology-mediated lives of restless Asian and Asian American women today. A woman escapes into dating simulations to forget her best friend’s abandonment; a teenager begins to see menacing omens on others’ bodies after her double eyelid surgery; reunited schoolmates are drawn into the Japanese mountains to participate in an uncanny social experiment; a supernatural karaoke machine becomes a K-pop star’s channel for redemption. In every story, characters refuse dutiful, docile stereotypes. They are ready to explode, to question conventions. Their compulsions tangle with unrequited longing and queer desire in their search for something ineffable across cities, countries, and virtual worlds.

With precision and provocation, Cleo Qian’s immersive debut jolts us into the reality of lives fragmented by screens, relentless consumer culture, and the flattening pressures of modern society—and asks how we might hold on to tenderness against the impulses within us.

Praise:

Perfectly askew, the stories in LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO thrum with restless questioning and acute longing, shot through with tart, knowing observations. It seemed to vibrate in my hands as I read it. —Ling Ma, author of Bliss Montage

Mischievous and hypnotizing, LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO takes us to manifold narrative realms where stories self-proliferate and artificial simulations often hijack and replace reality. Formally complex and emotionally potent, this is a collection I’ll return to again and again. —Yan Ge, author of Strange Beasts of China  

Cleo Qian’s LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO is an uncanny Asian American fantasia where fringe artist collectives, melancholy K-pop stars, anxious piano prodigies, disembodied digital ghosts, and lovelorn alchemists converge. Deeply psychological, these stories confront the bizarre horrors of modern life, finding surprising beauty and supernatural catharsis. I’ll be thinking about these characters for a long, long time. —Jean Chen Ho, author of Fiona and Jane

LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO is sharp and unprecious about the sticky aspects of having flesh. This collection is riddled with outsiders of different shades, of people who stand back from their realities with secret and burning questions. There are really tender portraits of yearning, of the unsteady but precious entanglements of both platonic and romantic love. It’s careful and soberly rendered, and it was a pleasure to read. —Raven Leilani, author of Luster

In LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO, Qian devastates like the best photographs from our youth, making us long for what’s lost while never losing sight of what is necessary for survival. The stories remind you that what you observe is already gone, and make you want to pay closer attention to what is already passing into memory. —Kyle Dillon Hertz, author of The Lookback Window