An immigrant family’s tragedy

The Tiger and the Cosmonaut
by Eddy Boudel Tan

Toronto: Viking Canada, 2025
$26.95 / 9780735248557

Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop

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Eddy Boudel Tan entered the Can Lit world with a sensational first novel. Inspired by the horrific 2015 plane crash by pilot suicide of Germanwings Flight 9525, After Elias used hindsight to explore a gay couple’s relationship before a similar tragedy ended it. When a commercial flight piloted by Elias Santos crashes in the Arctic Ocean one week before their destination wedding at an exotic Mexican resort, Coen Caraway loses both the man he loves and the illusion of happiness he has tried so hard to create. All that’s left is the black box recording of Elias’s final words, a cryptic message the rest of the novel unpacks.

Despite rave reviews and a couple of award nominations, After Elias failed to move me. There was no denying Boudel Tan’s gifts as a writer, but I found the story unconvincing. The plot—in which the lavish wedding, rather than being cancelled by the horrible death of one groom, instead becomes a contentious celebration of his life—teetered on the edge of melodrama, lending itself to New Age parody. The privileged gay milieu that Boudel Tan created was filled with yuppies who have all the right pop cultural references and say things like: “Beauty is more beautiful when it’s fleeting.” Character unlikability—and “Coen Caraway” seemed a perfect name for a Dynasty villain—made it harder for me to care about the narrator’s quest.

I did not read his second novel, The Rebellious Tide, which also involved the protagonist’s search for the truth about his family. But with The Tiger and the Cosmonaut, it’s clear that Boudel Tan has upped his game since After Elias. I suspect that its tighter prose, more convincing storyline, and greater character complexity—he has called it the hardest thing he’s ever written—have a lot to do with his choice of subject matter and its proximity to the author’s own life. 

Like Boudel Tan, protagonist Casper Han is the son of immigrants from Brunei who was raised in small town B.C. and grew up with Asian rage at white settler racism. Likewise, Casper eventually moved to the big city to begin a successful career and enjoy a committed relationship with another man. 

As with After Elias, the story is grounded in a crisis that leads the narrator to revisit his own past and uncover dark secrets. In this case, it’s the sudden disappearance of Casper’s father, who has wandered from his home into the same forest where, at age nine, Casper’s twin brother Sam tragically vanished, never to be found. The news of Mr. Han’s going missing draws the surviving Han siblings back together in their hometown not only to find their father but—especially for Casper—to solve the mystery of what happened to his twin. 

The Han family home is in the fictional town of Wilhelm, which Boudel Tan situates on the Sunshine Coast near Powell River. It’s clearly a stand-in for similar coastal B.C. communities and how they looked during the 1990s: the kind of towns run by one or two wealthy white families, where the Indigenous population was invisible or marginalized and non-white immigrants were tolerated at best. Today, notes our narrator, Wilhelm still welcomes visitors with a timber arch carved “from the trunk of an enormous cedar” by Paul Bunyan-like white men, butch and bearded, who “fled cities in search of honest, physical work” during the Depression. 

Casper arrives to find the town’s storefronts and café patios bearing art deco flourishes and potted flowers. Along with the now-obligatory rainbow crosswalk, there are empty lots where buildings once stood, and several boarded up businesses. “In the contest between preservation and decay,” notes Casper, “it’s unclear which is winning.” More importantly, it’s “a town surrounded by wilderness so deep and dark that it’s easily forgotten”—a place where “the forest has always looked more black than green to me.” 

And no wonder: Casper’s twin brother disappeared during the Whistler’s Night Festival, an annually observed celebration of a local myth in which a mysterious whistler is said to have lured people into the darkness of the forest. The book’s title comes from the boys’ respective costumes on that fateful night: Sam was dressed as a tiger and Casper as a cosmonaut (his interest in Russian space explorers forcing him to correct everyone calling him an astronaut). As with After Elias, there are scenes that lend themselves to film treatment: one is reminded of the haunting forest atmosphere from early episodes of Dark, a popular Netflix series that began with the disappearance of a boy about Sam’s age, also dressed in a costume.

The story moves along at a vigorous pace from the moment Casper, his boyfriend Anthony, and his surviving siblings begin arriving at the family home, located at the edge of the forest, to begin the search for Mr. Han. Casper is simultaneously resentful of Anthony’s white privilege and lack of empathy with the struggle of Asian Canadians while resentful of Mr. and Mrs. Han’s failure to validate their son’s gay relationship, or otherwise make Anthony feel welcome. 

Meanwhile, Mrs. Han seems oddly unconcerned about her husband’s disappearance, treating it as routine behaviour rather than as possible evidence of dementia. She’s more interested in setting the table and fussing over the family meal, prompting a comic moment when Casper’s sister Nadia, a no-nonsense lawyer from San Francisco, arrives on the scene: “I mean, why are we having a tea party? Shouldn’t we be out looking for Dad? Where are the police?”

Mr. Han’s reappearance shortly after the search begins, sound of mind but still in his pyjamas and clutching a pair of scissors, only raises more questions. Casper is convinced by the timing that his father’s nocturnal wandering has something to do with lingering grief over the loss of Sam. The attending police officer is Ivan Bauer, with whom Casper clearly has unresolved issues from their shared youth. Ivan’s father, the late Paul Bauer, was a local big shot and racist homophobe who disapproved of his son’s connection to Casper and also had issues with the senior Mr. Han. These factors all come into play as the search for the truth about Sam unfolds. 

As Boudel Tan draws the interracial dynamic, the Hans clearly knew their place in this town:

The Bauers were the town’s Trudeaus. They lived on the south side, where houses were cloistered by impenetrable hedges. Sure, Wilhelm society isn’t exactly a sophisticated system, but it’s still strange to imagine the Bauers and the Hans spending time together, even if their young sons were permitted friendship.

Casper’s older brother Ricky, a moody soul who has been away in Latin America, is gruff and socially inappropriate. (Introduced to Anthony, who he later refers to as “Ken Doll,” he says, “So, you’re the man who deflowered my brother.”) But he’s a complex character who shares Casper’s desire to learn the truth about Sam while holding long-simmering resentments about racist treatment of the town’s Asian residents. Sick and tired of his family’s tendency to keep themselves small, quiet, and obedient—the model immigrant stereotype—Ricky wants to see justice done in Wilhelm. He will shock the locals in how he seeks it.

Throughout the novel we meet a number of Wilhelm’s white residents, their characters revealed through both current events and Casper’s recollections of his childhood, the night of his brother’s disappearance, and the events of early adulthood that led him to flee the town for good. Apart from the Bauers—whose status meant that Ivan’s brief disappearance the same night as Sam’s would be given higher search priority than the Asian boy’s—there’s also the thuggish Mike Donnelly (“Even today, he looks like the kind of guy who’d piss all over the toilet seat”) and other suburban men whose small town tribalism Boudel Tan draws bitingly well.

The plot twist that begins in the novel’s final forty pages, revealing what happened to both Sam and Casper on that fateful night in 1996, reinforces the novel’s main truths: that no human conflict or relationship is ever as black-and-white as its most public expressions make it seem, and some of the choices we make for survival can damage those relationships forever. 

In exploring themes of love, loss, racism, and homophobia through the Han family’s story, The Tiger and the Cosmonaut presents an authentic, timely, and moving account of the Asian immigrant experience through a distinctly British Columbian lens—one that should resonate long after reading it.

[Editor’s note: On April 30, 7-8pm, Eddy Boudel Tan will take to the stage for a conversation with Jen Sookfong Lee, at Vancouver’s Central Library.]

Daniel Gawthrop is the author of the novel Double Karma (Cormorant) and five non-fiction titles, including The Rice Queen Diaries (Arsenal Pulp Press). Visit his Substack here and website here. [Editor’s note: Daniel Gawthrop has recently reviewed books by Ervin Malakaj, David Geselbracht, Maureen Palmer, Brian Antonson, Harman Burns, Ed Willes, and Billy-Ray Belcourt for BCR.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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