Lovelier, Lonelier, follows four peculiar and uniquely unsettled young people over several decades and multiple continents. Yam’s writing is bewitching, and his narrative a web of parallel stories, but his themes are classic and familiar: loss, failure, ambiguity, and the meaning of love. With this sweeping group portrait, Daryl Qilin Yam suggests that love can at once be everything and not enough.

In 1996, Tori, Jing, and Mateo—all close friends—reunite in Kyoto where they spend a few life-altering days together as Comet Hyakutake tears at the fabric of the universe. Against the backdrop of this disaster, Tori meets Isaac, a solo traveler, and brings him into the group. Between Isaac’s invisible companion (a talking macaque), Mateo’s romantic encounter with the spirit of a dead artist, and Tori’s sudden disappearance at the weekend’s end, it becomes clear to each of them that they are experiencing the world differently than everyone around them. Rather than fighting the mystery that encompasses their group, they each lean into the unknown, finding solace in the knowledge that amidst the chaos, they have one another.   

The bulk of the novel is narrated by the protagonist, Jing, aka The Loneliest Girl in the World. Jing is working on several creative projects, most notably a semi-autobiographical, somewhat absurdist tale of the Horvallan. As this story is fleshed out in the novel’s second part, the novel moves further from Jing’s real life and into the lives of those surrounding her. Jing’s story is interrupted by the inclusion of plot lines and recollections from the other three. None of these characters—a lonely girl, a grieving young writer, a lost runaway, and a boy for whom love is not enough—is fully comprehensible, let alone relatable. But by the end of the novel, it is impossible to not feel as involved in the story as they are. 

The novel’s first section takes place almost entirely during the weekend of the Great Comet, with a few retrospective chapters on how each character got to Kyoto in the first place. The second and third parts expand upon this foundation as most of the characters move on with their lives, careers, and families. The exception is Tori, whose story ends abruptly after the end of Part One. Just as Jing, Isaac, and Mateo are left reeling from her sudden disappearance, her absence reverberates as Yam shifts, in the novel’s middle section, from four alternating perspectives to focusing almost exclusively on Jing.

Part Two is a romance of star-crossed lovers, yet it is anything but traditional. Whereas the Kyoto episode focused on the group, this second part follows Jing as she grapples with the disappearance of her artist mother. Jing’s mother rarely paid her any mind, yet her absence leaves a gaping hole in Jing’s life, which slowly comes to be filled by an otherworldly man who tells Jing the tale of the Horvallan, who is an immortal alien, and his reincarnated soulmate over the course of several tens of thousands of years. Jing finds herself falling in love with the Horvallan, even as she builds her family with Isaac, now her husband. 

Jing’s emotional infidelity is never treated as a failure. Rather, Jing and Isaac know they love each other, and yet both have invisible ties to another lover in their future or past. Mateo, in contrast, is madly in love with his committed partner, Daniel. Yet in Spain, in 2004, they are unable to wed, and the societal obstacles to a blissful life together tear them apart time and again. 

How can love be both everything and not enough? Jing is confronted directly with this paradox when she meets an artist who is also in love with the Horvallan. The artist tells her:

Time is a cruel thing, something that we can never escape. And yet isn’t it so human? […] To think that we might? To say we shall try, at least, even against the odds? Because all we want is to be free, to liberate ourselves  against all suffering, yes? […] That is what breaks my heart. And that is what has kept it beating till now. 

This blasé delivery of earth-shattering profundities emphasizes the value of critical moments and lessons that punctuate the humdrum of the characters’ daily lives. The woman who utters this line is little more than a blip, yet her presence confirms for Jing exactly what she already knows: although love and time are at odds, she will do everything in her power to keep her paradoxical love alive. 

Part Three — Paradise: Iskandar, 2015 — follows a now older Jing and Isaac as they navigate life with a teenaged son and wildly different ambitions. Despite their age and maturity, Jing and Isaac both are still struggling with what life holds for them and the devastation that comes from simply existing and loving others. Jing and Isaac are both much more visibly settled at this point, but nothing is easy for them; each stage of life has brought its own challenges. What defines their latest transition is their commitment to coping with the struggles they face. Whether through art, companionship, or simple acceptance, Jing and Isaac must continue to take on hurdles as they arise. 

Lovelier, Lonelier boldly resists categorization. The characters’ seamless acceptance of their inexplicable experiences places the novel reasonably within the realm of magical realism, but with one of the characters writing a novel about her surreal romance, and their collective awareness that something is amiss, the book demands a more expansive categorization. My instinct is to avoid labeling it altogether; part of Yam’s charm, and the appeal of Lovelier, Lonelier, is that it cannot be confined within familiar expectations of genre and style. To read Lovelier, Lonelier, is to open your mind to reexamining the human condition and the function of literature itself, all through a woven net of bewitching storytelling. 

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Daryl Qilin Yam is a writer and editor of prose and poetry based out of Singapore. Lovelier, Lonelier is his sophomore novel, and his writing has been included in several periodicals and publications in Singapore as well as internationally. Yam co-founded Sing Lit Station, a literary charity, in 2016, and is currently serving as Managing Editor for the organization. 

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Rebecca Biagas is a junior at Wellesley College, majoring in Women’s and Gender Studies and American Studies. She has a specific interest in transnational feminism, which she is currently studying in Rabat, Morocco, for the semester.