Fragrant Harbor

Fragrant Harbour by John Lanchester is a novel that is hard to praise too highly. Set in Hong Kong, it presents the stories of four main characters, each of which is an immigrant to this city. Behind them at all times is a culture that rules their lives, sets the limits of what might be possible, but is always hard for outsiders to penetrate. That the culture affects all aspects of their lives, however, is a given. Each character pursues self-interest, the different eras they inhabit defining and characterising the different stages of the city's development. Thus we see its pre-war emergence from a dirty nineteenth century right through to its contemporary role as a driving force of free market globalisation. When Tom Stewart, on his way to Honk Kong in the 1930s, accepts the challenge of a wager, he changes the direction of lives, not just is own. A random, trivial suggestion suggests he might learn Cantonese in the thirty days of a shared voyage to new lives. His tutor is Sister Maria, a Chinese nun who proves to be an enlightened, motivating teacher. Tom Stewart learns the language, wins the bet and begins a relationship with things Chinese that will sustain him through war, peace, economic growth, professional life, clandestine activity and property speculation. Dawn Stone, previously Doris, hails from Blackpool, but she makes it to Hong Kong. She has a career in the media, having gone through the once well trodden paths of learning her trade on provincial newspapers and then graduating to London. She makes it good and proper in the public relations business that booms out east. She seems to have few scruples and is ruled by pragmatism. She is not alone. Michael Ho is a young businessman. He has a vision of an air conditioned future that is on a knife edge between success and failure. He is sub-contracted from Germans who operate north of London to avail themselves of the country's more flexible approach to labour. He has a rip-off sub-contracting factory in Ho Chi Minh City. He is Hong Kong based, but from Fujian, and thus also an immigrant. He has recently relocated his family to Sydney. Interests in Guangzhou will determine his fate. Mountains are high and the emperor is far away, his contacts tell him, so practices are mainly local. He must learn. He must raise capital. It is perhaps true everywhere in this global economy, where Hertfordshire taxi drivers remonstrate in Urdu and curse in English. And it is pragmatism that rules the place. As globalisation becomes an issue, the place is the world, not just Hong Kong. In this new world which appears to be built on the professedly liberal economic ideas that have underpinned the colony's free-for-all, these immigrants to the place make their lives, make their fortunes in their own ways. But still there is a constant in that they can only succeed within the protective umbrella shade of bigger interests than their own. In a city state that grew out of an illicit and illegal trade in opium

Seeing that the only previous reviewer gave it one star and I absolutely loved the book, I just had to write a review to set the record straight:This book has everything: It's very suspenseful and moving, beautifully written and I loved the structure: Four parts, each with a different narrator and different length. All interconnected, but to various degrees. When the first part finished and I realised that the next part was starting with a new character in a different period, I felt regret as I didn't want to leave the previous part. But after only a few lines I was roped in to the new story.Hong Kong and its fascinating history provides a great backdrop, but the novel is mainly about those four people, how and why they came to Hong Kong and what happens to them.I was amazed how different this book is compared to the previous novels by Lanchester ('The Debt To Pleasure' & 'Mr Phillips'). In my opinion he's getting better and better. Looking forward to his fourth.PS: I also enjoyed James Clavell's novel 'Tai-Pan' very much. If you're interested in a novel about how Hong Kong started, read that.

through the years. Good character development plus a compelling writing style, makes this a great read.

I read John Lanchester's Fragrant Harbor both from the perspective of someone born and raised in Hong Kong of British descent, and someone extremely interested in the one-time colony's rich history. That combination uniquely qualifies me to appreciate the handful of novels that have dealt with the colony in recent years - and for the most part I have come away thoroughly disappointed.That is not the case with Fragrant Harbor, however; where most authors show a complete lack of even basic geographic knowledge for the place - let alone how it works - Lanchester obviously knows his material. What he has done with this book is something truly stunning - he has carefully and tightly interwoven the real events, places and names in Hong Kong's history with his fictional characters and a touch of artistic license to create a story that not only entertains, but educates as well.Fragrant Harbor is wholly satisfying on every level, and I can unreservedly recommend it to anyone interested in a well written story, a gripping read, or the subject matter itself - the lives and interactions of expatriates and refugees, both in Hong Kong and Asia in general.

For anyone who has read Lanchester's other novels (the fiendishly clever Debt to Pleasure and the Walter Mittyish Mr. Phillips), this novel will come as a big surprise. Far more serious, complex, and traditional a novel than either of these others, it might even be considered old-fashioned in its grand-scale story-telling. Concerning itself with three generations of people who have succumbed to the siren's song of Hong Kong as a financial capital--and sometimes found her to be a fickle mistress--the novel is as much about the city and the personal connections one brings to business as it is about individuals. "Longevity can be a form of spite," Tom Stewart announces at the beginning of the novel. Stewart, an old man at the end of the century, has spent almost sixty years working in the former colony. On his way to Hong Kong in the early `30's, Stewart was taught Chinese on shipboard by Sister Maria, with whom he remained in contact as they both began their vocations--he as a hotel manager and she as a missionary to the remote countryside--and throughout their years in Hong Kong. Enduring the upheavals of colonialism, the Chinese revolution, the Japanese occupation and subsequent World War II atrocities, and the postwar rise of drug trafficking, graft, corruption, and the triads, Sister Maria and Stewart separately experience the myriad influences affecting both everyday life and business life in China and Hong Kong. Their different responses to these influences reflect both the tumult and vibrancy of the community, and give a broad scope to Lanchester's vision. Dawn Stone, an ambitious journalist whose career in Hong Kong is encapsulated for fifty pages at the beginning of the novel (a mystifying digression, it seems, at first), plays a role at the end of the novel as the complexities of business life during the turnover become threatening. Filled with local color and the kind of detail accessible only to someone who has grown up in a place, Lanchester's novel vitalizes Hong Kong's life in both its glories and its sleaziness. The characters vividly illustrate the attitudes common to the periods in which they appear, and the novel, which never loses sight of its goal to tell a good story well, is both exciting and enlightening. A big novel in scope and ambition, I found it entertaining and stimulating, a wonderful read. Mary Whipple