Summary

This notebook commences with a crocodile’s dream in which it mingled with humans. Ultimately, the dream concluded with predator animals pilfering the crocodile’s snacks. The crocodile came head-to-head with the animals but “suppressed the tiny, selfsame ferocious creature within itself” (68).

The summer following the protagonist’s first year, she moved in with relatives and preoccupies herself with Debate Society meetings, becoming club president. She wrote. She slept. She drank. She “fe(lt) like something straight out of Lagerkvist: a hideously deformed dwarf stuffed into a jar” (70).

At the next class’s orientation, the narrator met first-years Zhi Rou and Tun Tun and they immediately clicked, winding into a discussion about ideals and family. The narrator noted the pair’s “pedigree,” recognizing “traces of social class” (73) as well as their mischievousness, calling them “two little devils” (75). Although Zhi Rou had switched to humanities...