This book was... odd. The author clearly went to the "beautiful but disjointed descriptions of objects" school of writing that I thought was very high-brow when I was in high school. Now I'm too old and tired to find it much more than annoying. I'm sure, from an educated critic's perspective, the writing is lovely and inventive. But seriously, I can only handle so many incomplete sentences about the color of a fish at a market stall before I really want to move on.
This book is ostensibly about a white American family living in Hong Kong. The father is a journalist covering the Vietnam war and is mostly an absentee. The mother is distant and exhausted for unclear reasons. There are two daughters, one who is wild and the other who protects her. And, of course, there is the requisite staff person of local extraction. The Amah in this case is little better than a stereotype: a large Chinese woman who speaks broken English, yells at the girls and takes them to markets and temples. The book is very short, so maybe I shouldn't expect more characterization of a secondary character. But you're already treading a little thin writing about a white family in Hong Kong, couldn't you try to make the one important Chinese character a little less... ugh?
Given that I will be a doctor in 12 weeks (hide your children), I couldn't help diagnosing the wild daughter with a personality disorder. She clearly has histrionic or borderline personality disorder. This novel is practically the DSM IV (DSM V wasn't out when I started med school). So, I had some trouble identifying with her and her sister's attempts to help her.
And then, the writing. There is actually a decent amount of plot in this book. There's a possible sexual assault, the Vietnam war, and even the death of a major character, but it gets a bit lost in the writing. So much of the small space in this book is allotted to "evocative" descriptions of the landscape or the way a man holds his brandy snifter. All in incomplete sentences. Like this. Repeatedly.
So, yea, I guess you can tell I didn't like it much. But I finished it.
I give it 2 out of 10.
Next up: #42 Empress by Shan Sa
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