Book of the Month -- Shanghai Girls

After having thoroughly enjoyed Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See, I was looking forward to reading her new book Shanghai Girls.

As I expected, the author offered me a sumptuous feast: skillful plotting, richly drawn characters, emotional themes and atmosphere. I became immersed into the lives of sisters May and Pearl and their extended family. I went on the journey with them from cosmopolitan, booming, fun-filled, dangerous Shanghai into their flight to the United States. It told me of their struggles and insurmountable setbacks, their nightmarish detention at Angel Island before getting into the United States, their marriages and the situations they had to face, accept and surmount.

At its heart, Shanghai girls is the story of the strong relationship of sisters, of unbreakable family bonds of love, support and strength sisters can draw from one another, but also of the ways they can tear each other apart.

An enjoyable, and satisfying read.

Book of the Month - Map of the Invisible World

I read Tash Aw’s first novel The Harmony Silk Factory in 2005. I liked his fast-moving prose, engaging dialogue, characterization and especially the novel’s setting--Malaysia. I couldn’t wait to read his second novel Map of the Invisible World.

He didn’t disappoint me. Carefully drawn believable characters, themes of complex relationships, love and betrayal are set against the politics of turmoil in post-colonial Indonesia. The novel is permeated with a sense of doom.

Sixteen-year-old Adam is an orphan. He and his older brother, Johan, were abandoned by their mother as children. He’s abandoned again: Adam watched Johan being taken away by a wealthy Malaysian couple; and now Karl, the artist who raised Adam, has been arrested by soldiers during Sukarno’s drive to purge 1960s Indonesia of its colonial past. He sets on a quest to find Karl but all he has to guide him are some old photos and letters, one of which sends him to the colourful dangerous capital of Jakarta, teeming with riots, protests and propaganda, where he meets the eccentric American anthropologist and ex-pat Margaret. They both embark on journeys of discovery.

Some reviewers view his novels as an impressive contribution to literature for which Joseph Conrad & Somerset Maugham are famous; and his prose, described as vivid, haunting & memorable, is reminiscent of Graham Greene.

An enjoyable, absorbing and satisfying read set in an exotic yet tumultuous world.