[ book excerpt: novel ]

Lindsay Wong: Villain Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies

For Lindsay Wong, funny, discomfiting, absurd, and grotesque aren’t strange bedfellows. They’re the lifeblood of her writing and a seemingly natural offshoot of her own personality.

In reply to a Vancouver Sun interviewer back in 2018, Wong exclaimed, “In some ways, I’ve always had the ability to find humour in the most difficult and most inappropriate places. If I couldn’t laugh at myself and the shitty situations around me, I’d probably spend all my spare time crying, which would be a huge waste of time.”

And the reading public has readily embraced both the author’s unique style and outlook.

Reviewing Wong’s Vancouver- and NYC-set memoir, The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family, Amanda Leduc praised the “darkly funny,” book, describing it as “steeped in the macabre and grotesque” and “at once an unflinching portrait of a borderline abusive childhood and a testament to the power that family has to shape us for good or ill.”

Ruth Panofsky applauded Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality, Wong’s second book, for its short stories that “evoke a macabre, surreal netherworld governed by terror and haunted by ghosts, demons, and zombies.”

A rollicking (if horrific) tale about Lucinda Lo, a “broke MFA dropout living in Vancouver with six roommates and zero job prospects,” Wong’s third book (and debut novel) stitches together guffaw-eliciting comedy with astute, almost surgical, cultural analysis.

The British Columbia Review would like to thank Lindsay Wong and publisher Penguin Canada for permission to reprint the following novel excerpt.

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Villain Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies [excerpt]

…. Once I’d changed into my death-white pajamas, I was placed, like a parcel, in a chauffeured town car, which took me to the dilapidated house in East Vancouver where I lived with my six roommates. I was instructed to retrieve only my passport and birth certificate. I was not allowed to pack any belongings, but it didn’t matter because I owned nothing of importance. My life was well documented, stored safely on social media grids, as expected of my time and generation. Besides, I had already fled one, if not two, physical spaces, and was adept at charting a geography of pain.

As instructed, I gathered my two bent little official documents into a tote bag from a local writers’ festival, snuck a $65 tube of dark pink lipstick (a luxury brand) into my pocket. Then I left a note in the bedroom of the roommate about her multipurpose dress that was thrown away: I’m sorry for borrowing and losing your dress.With it, I left her my last $20 and a fast-food coupon, a pitiful exchange. I felt sorry for her, and more sorry that I reviled her, a well-known theater director in her late fifties, more than halfway to death, who could not afford to live alone. It seems terrible to admit, but I felt repulsed by her because she seemed to embody, ooze, emulate all aspects of failure. With hag-like gray hair and misshapen water-balloon breasts that sagged to a junk food belly, her appearance and posture announced monetary defeat, one of not being even able to afford fresh produce and vegetables. Like myself and the others in our shared house, she slept on a mattress on the floor. She had profiles in national newspapers and an updated Wikipedia page, but didn’t have a bed frame. The most successful loser of six roommates.

Joyful Coffin & Co. would cover any costs for breaking the lease, the salespeople promised. It didn’t matter because I wasn’t coming back. Only by being dead could I afford to forfeit my rental deposit.

The town car took me to YVR and the driver handed me a lucky red envelope with a one-way ticket to Beijing, a temporary VISA of $150 for airport sundries. On autopilot, I watched romantic comedies and nibbled at my soggy plane food for sixteen hours, drank vodka and whiskey to numb myself. Don’tthink, I whispered and proceeded to think too much, picking at the loose skin on my fingers until my hands bled. When I landed at Beijing airport, another smiling trio of well-dressed salespeople met me. They were carrying a sign with my most recent photo and Chinese name,黛玉 (Daiyu), or Black Jade in English. Taking my arms, they ushered, marched, and guided me towards a hospital-white limousine. At first glance, I wondered if I was being murdered upon arrival and shoved into a box. When I hesitated, glanced back too long at Arrivals, they nudged me, a firm but gentle push, into the vehicle. I stumbled but their hands were practiced and ready to hold me. Inside, there were only four of us, disheveled from our respective plane rides. A heavyset man with thick, crooked glasses and a ponytail seemed panicked as he groaned, furiously texting on his phone. I wondered to whom he was texting with such grand theatrics, and then I was irritated that he had openly brought contraband with him when I had followed the instructions. I sat down, fumbled for a seat belt, then decided it was not necessary. A very thin girl scowled at me, while a younger one in pigtails greeted me in her schoolgirl Mandarin.

“No talking,” the salespeople said, still smiling.

Then, finally, “No phone,” and they took any last lifelines to our living.

A pause, then the salespeople added: “Thank you and please.”

I smirked at the man because it was only fair, and he just looked at me, unblinking. Said nothing. It was then the salespeople handed out small pink pills and bottled water, and ordered us to swallow two. When we glanced at each other, confused, they repeated “Swallow,” again in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English in case we did not understand. We gulped our shockingly bitter pills, showed them our pink tongues on demand, and they smiled wider, clapped, and said: “So lucky, so smart, so good-looking. You are special.”

We sat in the parking lot for a while, and I wondered when the vehicle might move. Were we waiting on more lucky arrivals? Then I felt a dull sensation, an anesthetic sleepiness. A lurching within my stomach, a heaviness unfurling inside my eyes and a slowing of the brain. I felt myself slumping over. Dimness, a light bulb flickering; yellow echolocation in my ears, perhaps corporate trickery, plausible and instant white death.

When I woke, passportless, I found myself in the mulchy wetness of the gloomy underground caves. I felt the extravagant lipstick tube in my left pocket. A hot, moist hand petting my forehead, and I heard sickly cooing: “Welcome, welcome to the Afterlife, Dead Dear” ….



[Villain Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies by Lindsay Wong, published by Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada. Copyright © Lindsay Wong, 2026. Reprinted with permission.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line 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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