Setting

Time and physical setting

The short story “Only You Farang Are So Easy to Come and Leave” by Mai Nardone is set in the late 90s in Bangkok, Thailand and in the US. The action spans over several months, but it comprises of two main events: the father deciding to move back to the US and his daughter Lara’s visit to the US a few months later.

The opening lines set the time and physical setting: “In ’97 we bought back our old townhouse on the outskirts of Bangkok. We came down from the condominium...” (ll. 1-2)

The events start in Bangkok where a mixed-race family needs to move from an apartment to the suburbs following the economic crisis. The suburb house is described as follows: “The townhouse had a plot of earth in the back that Dad used to call a garden [...] Ma had the washer dragged out back so that the house felt bigger” (ll. 2-5). Its description helps hint that the characters have a different approach to their circumstances. The father tries to see the bright side of their situation while the mother is bothered by having to move to a tiny house.

The house is described again after the father announces he will move back to the US:

The family room stood empty. Ma left me food on the kitchen counter. Dad existed in a periphery, the sounds of his living always a layer removed, a room away. His only presence was in the traces he left: shaving cream in the sink, his sock buried in the sofa… (ll. 113-115)

This description suggests the family broke apart even before the father actually left for the US. The house already announces his departure. The fact the characters avoid each other amplifies the idea of conflict.

A symbolic element of the setting is an abandoned construction site which the father and the daughter visit: “…a penthouse where we sat with o...