TURTLE BEACH

by Blanche d'Alpuget ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 7, 1983

Judith Wilkes, an Australian journalist who's rather unhappily married to a member of Parliament, takes the opportunity to go to Malaysia--to do a story on the boat-people refugees: arriving from Vietnam in all their wretchedness, they've found only hatred and maltreatment in the coastal camps. Judith's guide there will be Minou Hobday, a Chinese/Vietnamese woman, (a rumored Saigon bar-girl, in fact) now married to the Australian ambassador in Kuala Lumpur. And Judith finds a much-needed model of independence, of erotic forthrightness, in Minou's perverse, outrageous sexiness--as well as in the jumble-culture and steamy climate of Malaysia itself. But this idyllic image is short-lived. . . because it soon appears that Minou isn't really so free and commanding as she seems: her own family is to be on the next boat arriving illegally in Malaysian waters; her personal charisma and government connections probably won't help her to insure their safety; and Judith, who has had a slow education in the virtue of feminine wiles, now sees that even such a wily woman as Minou can be powerless, dependent, subject to the whims of fate. (Will her family make it to shore? If so, will they then survive here?) Thus, Australian novelist d'Alpuget explores the themes of female freedom (largely sexual) and inescapable dependence--writing crisply, intelligently, with the story breezed along on a colorful, fully extended fan of Malaysia's sights and cultural complexities. And though there's a lack of focus in this four-layer composition (Judith, Minou, the refugees, Malaysia itself), with the impressionistic rendering of Judith's viewpoint becoming a little exhausting and confusing, d'Alpuget's first novel to appear here is vivid, taut, sex-perfumed: a distinctive performance from one of Australia's more promising newcomers.

Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schsuter

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1983

Categories: FICTION