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Title: Fragrant Harbor by John Lanchester ISBN: 0-14-200337-9 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 26 August, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.4 (10 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Full Circle
Comment: I really enjoyed this book. I liked the sparks of humor, "What do you say to a 900 pound gorilla with a machine gun?" ("Sir.") My appreciation for it grew after I'd finished my reading and was able to look back on it. Granted, it's not until the last 50 pages of the book that you begin to understand why the first section about Dawn Stone is there. Until the reading is complete, the novel seemed disjointed; but afterward, it seemed remarkably unified. I loved how the characters of the first and last sections set in the modern time completed the story of Tom Stewart. The historical novel which is the largest middle section of the book is incredibly fascinating. The unrequited love of Tom for Sister Maria that is never quite articulated but certainly implied is the emotional glue that holds the tale. In the end, Lancaster brings us to a full circle fulfilled in time. As readers, we gain a greater perspective that supercedes the point of view of any of the individual characters which is a remarkable feat. While the criticisms that there are better Hong Kong novels or that he could have more description might be true, I think Lancaster has masterfully done something different. He weaves the reader through the storylines and then pulls us out of them to give a greater sense of wholeness. If angels live centuries in service, then the readers' perspective comes closer to that more eternal viewpoint through this novel which is breathtaking. Bravo!
Rating: 3
Summary: Blunt edge
Comment: I hate to be a party pooper, but I was disappointed with this novel. It was readable enough, but I was never fully engaged and I found the modern-day muckraking journalist subplot unconvincing and unnecessary--almost as if John Lanchester had been persuaded to include it as a way to make the book appeal to readers who might mistake a reporter named Dawn Stone for Danielle Steele.
The descriptions of Hong Kong are very fine, though, and Tom Stewart is an interesting, if disaffected, character. Lanchester writes well. "Longevity can be a form of spite. I am an old man myself now, and recognize the symptoms," is a nice opening for a novel. But a superior book about Hong Kong is Martin Booth's "Hiroshima Joe." That is a book that once read, is not soon forgotten.
Rating: 4
Summary: Hong Kong: outward resplendency and underlying ignominy
Comment: John Lanchester's Fragrant Harbor adopts more complexity and formality in comparison to his two previous novels, the painfully humorous and opinionated The Debt to Pleasure and the satirical Mr. Philips. Readers who are familiar with the history of the former British colony will discern Fragrant Harbor a novel set against the historical backdrop of Hong Kong in the twentieth century (1935-1997).
Tom Stewart, the younger son of an inn owner in England, was born with a visceral desire to travel and China had always caught his imagination. In 1935, at the age of 22, he bought a ticket on the Darjeeling in a six-week voyage to Hong Kong via Marseilles, the Mediteranean, Suez Canal and Bombay. As the ship rounded a wide corner onto the Thames, the England shore receded and never did Stewart expect his rash decision to leave the country would alter the course of his life forever.
The arrival to the ship of two Catholic missionaries, Sister Benedicta and Sister Maria, caused an upheaval. When Sister Benedicta and a businessman Marler fell out on each other in a heated debate over the Catholic Church spreading superstition and ignorance, Stewart became a pawn of a wager. The wager stipulated that Sister Maria, a native of Fujian Province, could teach a Stewart wholly ignorant of the Chinese language and raised him to a functional standard in a matter of weeks.
Little did Stewart and Sister Maria know that the wager turned into a cherished friendship and proved its veracity when the two parted to their separate ways. Sister Maria diligently pursued her mission works in Mainland China while Stewart helped Masterson run The Empire Hotel in Hong Kong. Stewart's enduring of the changes of political environments, the Japanese occupation in early 1940s, and Mao's foundation of the People's Republic in 1949 burgeoned in him a close tie to the city.
In spite of Stewart's bittersweet reminiscence of his 60 years of life in the colony, he had painted an authentic picture of Hong Kong, with dashing verisimilitude, through the weathered gale of political shifts, the rampant economic shoot-up, and the augmenting corruption and crime. The magnitude with which he captured the geographical details and the vivid vignettes of Hong Kongers' lives could only be accessible to natives. Stewart expressed his complaisant affection for Hong Kong:
"You get past a certain point in life and you've accumulated a history in a place and so that's where you're from. Most of my memories and all my friends are here." (223)
I am a native of Hong Kong who never had the opportunity to live through the times Stewart had experienced. Growing up during the mid 1970s into the 1980s, when the fate of Hong Kong was put on the global spotlights, China prepared to take over the sovereignty in its glorious return to the embrace of motherland. Stewart had evoked the amazing fact that after the Bruits had reigned over 150 years, the English language (though taught in school and widely spoken) minimally penetrated the city. The Bruits had left behind its inveterate landmarks and traditions but only marginally affected the lives of average Hong Kongers.
The first part of the book, what seems to be some outrageous digression about a British journalist Dawn Stone's arriving at the colony in 1995, is to my minimal interest of the novel. While she did not contribute to the story until the very end, Lanchester has deftly employed her character to testify the near-snobbish lifestyle of modern Hong Kong cliques (the obsession of money, the swanking of wealth and expensive clothes, and the contention for success at the expense of stepping down others).
Tom Stewart reminded me the beguiling everyday, anecdotal life of Hong Kongers. He was taken by surprise by the ways in which he found the city a surprise. The exotic elements were what he expected and aggravated his desire to loosen the shackles of England. Like any foreign newcomers, he felt the need to conform and to fit in was crushing. Correspondences with Sister Maria through numerous letters had helped him adjust to the hustle-bustle. Inculcation of the Chinese language and literature gave him a lift in expanding his hotel business.
If one thing with which Stewart had nailed the place to the root, it would be the language and its speakers. Stewart deemed Cantonese (my native language) as one of the best languages for swearing because it was completely in harmony with the Cantonese characters (the bluntness, directness, money-mindedness, clannishness, worldliness, materialism, and argumentativeness). It truly hit home!
I unreservedly recommend this book to readers who want to explore the history and lives of Hong Kong in the twentieth century. Stewart's description of the city mirrored that to my grandfather. John Lanchester might have inadvertently mistaken Deep Water Bay for Repulse Bay, Magazine Gap Road for Old Peak Road, he truly knows the city where he spends a substantial amount of his life. He has presented his readers an unbiased view of Hong Kong: abound with its outward resplendency and underlying ignominy. After all Fragrant Harbor is a work of fiction, thoroughly and thoughtfully written. 4.2 stars.
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