Book Review: If You Still Recognise Me by Cynthia So

‘If You Still Recognise Me’ by Cynthia So (they/them) was released in 2022, and tells the story of eighteen year old Elsie, and the summer before she leaves for university at Cambridge. Having grown up in Oxford, which doesn’t have the same queer spaces that cities like London, Birmingham, Manchester, or Brighton have, she felt alienated among her fellow LGBTQ+ peers, because she is Chinese, not white.

After the death of Gung Gung, her maternal grandfather, who she hadn’t seen in eight years, Elsie’s mother returned to Hong Kong and came back with her maternal grandmother Po Po.

Po Po being back in Elsie’s life raises a lot of questions. She wished she’d known Gung Gung and is left wondering why her family never visited until now, why she doesn’t really have a relationship with her Uncle Kevin, and why her mother looks withered and worn out. Elsie is expected to spend time with Po Po, despite having holiday plans with her best friend Ritika, and hopes of getting a job, too.

Her summer plans are quick to change, when Elsie’s childhood best friend, Joan, comes back on the scene after eight years, having moved to Hong Kong with her dad, and disappearing off the face of the earth. But she’s back, back in Oxford, and immediately knew Elsie when they met again on the High Street. And when Ada, her online best friend, and long-distance crush, tells her about her grandma’s letters from her estranged best friend Theresa, Elsie is determined to get them back in touch as a grandiose gesture of love for Ada.

This book is incredibly wholesome and heartbreaking, navigating themes of communication and community in online spaces and how being in an online community can open your eyes and broaden your horizons. Elsie and her online best friend Ada have bonded over their love for a comic series called Eden Recoiling, where both Elsie and Ada see themselves in the powerful side characters, Zaria and Mayumi. Both Ada and Elsie hadn’t seen themselves represented in such a positive light, and value their friendship over the distance between them. Ada lives across the ocean in New York, while Elsie is in Oxford, but despite the distance they’re incredibly close.

Things begin to go awry upon Elsie finishing her A-Levels and Ada gifting her a fanfiction, calling her the “Mayumi to her Zaria”. The duo that Elsie and Ada ship.

This book and the relationship between Ada and Elsie is reflective of many young fandom experiences. I met many amazing people through fan spaces, and although we no longer speak to one another, I considered their friendship completely indispensable at the time, and have no idea where I would have been without that small community of anime fans I met online when I was fifteen.

I loved seeing how Joan empowered Elsie to go out of her comfort zones, and although she was convinced that Elsie should tell Ada that she’s looking for Theresa, she is very much down for the ride.

There were so many sweet moments in this book. By having Elsie venture out into the world in search of Theresa, she managed to encounter a variety of queer elders living their best lives with loving partners. It is empowering and sweet to see middle aged, and greying sapphic women loving their partners, and how seeing older women happily in love with women, empowers not only Elsie, but Joan and Ritika in their own queerness.

This exposure to older queer people and Elsie’s excitement and empowerment in seeing them truly makes the events toward the end of the book more evocative. I was near tears getting to see what happened when everything fell into place.

This book is incredibly heavy. It covers hard-hitting topics like coming out, being disowned, grief, family feuds, and loneliness. Cynthia So managed to write a book that was so powerful and constantly made me have to take a second to collect myself. I devoured it, despite the frequent need to sit and let my own anguish at the characters and their situations stew, I couldn’t leave it on my shelf for long. You want Elsie to be happy.

I loved this book. I was moved to near-tears, and it made me want to reach out to those same online friends I haven’t spoken to in forever, and tell them how invaluable their friendship was at the time, and how this book made me think of the good times we had together on the internet. It really does show how much joy can come from those online spaces, and I felt such a large sense of yearning to go back to that point in my life, and appreciate it, knowing what I know now.

I would recommend this book in a heartbeat.