Tuesday 27 September 2011

Book 54, Country 60 - Malaysia

The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw - first published in GB 2005

I'm not sure quite why it has taken me 4 months to finish this book.  I think I needed a rest from my world tour and summer is always a time when there is more going on.  Anyway I am now back on track.  This wasn't the greatest book  I have ever read but it got better once I got passed the first section.  The book is about the life of a man Chinese textile merchant called Johnny Lim and is told in 3 parts, first by his son, secondly by his wife Snow and thirdly by his friend Englishman Peter Wormwood.  They all see him from a different angle.  His son hates him but we begin to see other sides to his character when Snow and Peter take up the story.    Snow's story centres around the belated honeymoon, which she takes with Johnny, Peter, a Japanese professor Mamoru Kunichika and another Englishman Frederick Honey in 1941 just before the Japanese invasion of Malaya.  They travel in an old fishing boat to visit the mysterious islands known as the Seven Maidens.  At first it seems like they have discovered paradise but then it all starts to go disasterously wrong.  This bit reminded me of Alex Garland's  novel The Beach.     6/10