The Fetishist by Katherine Min

I did not realize that the author had died before this book was published and that it was published posthumously. I hope she is happy with it as it turned out, a work of raging against the machine, a fantasy about striking back at the white patriarchy that takes what they want when they want it, and then spit it back out. The vision of control that JD Vance and his cohorts yearn to return to, where women stay at home, do as they are told, and are inevitably crushed under the weight of male ineptitude. There are three stories of three larger-than-life characters woven loosely together. Alma Soon Ja Lee is a woman of South Korean heritage and a world-renowned cellist, but when we meet her she is struggling with MS. She falls into a coma and in her coma relives her love story with her former fiancé Daniel Karmody. Daniel is a violinist and the fetishist of the novel who has damaged Alma and countless other Asian women through his objectification of them; when he re-experiences his love for Alma he also experiences deep regret for how badly he treated her. And finally there is Kyoko Tokugawa, a young Japanese-American punk rocker who blames Daniel for her mother Emi’s suicide and kidnaps him with the help of her partner Kornell; she plans on killing Daniel in her late mother’s basement by forcing him to eat the poisonous Japanese fish Fugu, or pufferfish. Well, it doesn't quite go that way, but a girl can dream.