The novel is set in 2019 Hong Kong at the time of the protests, but if you are a reader who is hoping for a lot of political discussion and staging, this may not be the novel for you. Hong Kong’s political dissention was only the backdrop to the novel; really, the novel is about a 50-something year old white man who like many other expatriates, has made Hong Kong home, and is just working through his own angst and/or issues.
Adrian Gyle met his friend, the super-rich Jimmy Tang, in Cambridge.
“Jimmy was a scion of one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest families, and I was a scholarship boy from a small town no one has ever heard of” (p9).
Adrian studied Mandarin/Chinese studies, and so after graduation, came to Hong Kong to ‘perfect’ his Mandarin, supposedly. Either just a poor choice of word, since it is unlikely language can be ‘perfected’ – ‘polish’ or ‘practise’ or ‘improve’ may be a better word than ‘perfect’ – or else, supremely arrogant. Either would actually be possible given our protagonist. In Hong Kong, Adrian has access to the high life despite his modest salary and career achievements, thanks to Jimmy and the welcome of the Tang family. It is obvious why Adrian would attach himself to Jimmy like a barnacle, but less obvious why Jimmy keeps up the friendship. Perhaps because it is an old friendship from university days, but apparently Jimmy found Adrian’s circumstances interesting:
“He was more interested in my school, a secondary modern in the English countryside. That was true exoticism for hum, he was fascinated by the class machinery behind such an establishment” (p13).
The story goes that the middle-aged Jimmy Tang is having an affair with one Rebecca To, a girl of 23 and therefore less than half his age, and from a good family. Adrian is made the reluctant but interested witness to their affair, and is himself drawn to Rebecca. Rebecca attends the political demonstrations regularly, and participates actively as a protester, while Jimmy and his family toe the line with the Chinese government. The entire affair and indeed Hong Kong itself, is depicted through the eyes and experiences of Adrian, who expected to be exempt from the danger of the situation, and finds this may not be the case.
“All through the previous twenty-four hours I had been feeling increasingly anxious, aware that I was becoming les and less invisible in the city as my outward appearance as a foreigner – as a European – began to take on new and dangerous meanings” (p25).
It would have been nice if the story had then gone on to illustrate the changes for Europeans, the new and dangerous meanings that took on, but no, alas, we see relatively little more of the politicisation of foreigners in Hong Kong. The whole story is told through the very narrow and rather alienated eyes of a white, middle aged, male, Briton, and almost entirely from his perspective only. It is therefore not very much embedded in the street or local experience, and seems once removed from Hong Kong’s reality. The novel really is about Adrian, and not so much about Hong Kong.
I may well be missing something, but I am quite staggered by the positive reviews of this novel. It was not without merit, but I do take issue with the looseness and imprecision of the writing, which at times did cause me to stumble in the course of reading, just to decipher the meaning. It is ironic because the protagonist who is the first person narrator in this novel, is supposed to be a journalist/reporter (he prefers the latter term), and therefore we could surmise should be a skilled writer/communicator. However, there were many sentences which were ambiguous, which caused me to trip in the course of reading. For example:
“I rarely saw him at Fung Shing after that hot night of bastinadoes and disorder, men running after boys and girls in black with bamboo canes, then being chased back the same way when the momentum swung […]” (p8)
– it is unclear to me who was in black, and who had the bamboo canes, the men or the boys and girls. This kind of sentence construction is weak and keeps recurring in this novel.
There were a few odd Cantonese phrases and words thrown in, probably for verisimilitude, but hardly enough to give a flavour of what was happening in Hong Kong in 2019. Places are named, but the expat circles and local circles – except for those of the super rich – are clearly quite segregated. Despite decades in Hong Kong, Adrian seems to have made no local friends or local contacts except for Jimmy and his crowd. And yet, the novel has the merit of drawing the reader into Adrian’s life, and making that seem like the whole world. However narrow his existence, the reader is effectively engaged with what happens to Adrian, so perhaps it has its strengths as a piece of writing, however disaffected the protagonist may be. But I do not know that this is the kind of protagonist who would have my sympathy or even interest. If it was not set in Hong Kong, I doubt I would have worked my way through the novel. Its observations are not unintelligent, it shows an appreciation of nuances in human behaviour (at least amongst the circles Adrian moves in) but it is so largely oblivious to the average Hong Kong life going on, and so wrapped up in its class and expat bubble, that it feels very limited and in that sense, lacking. Seeing through the eyes of Adrian Gyle made me feel blind to the larger landscape which is Hong Kong.
So disappointing! The locale and timing have such promise.