There's nothing wrong with Clavell's new "Asian Saga" novel that cutting 900 pages wouldn't fix. No, that's not a misprint: at 1206 pp., this account of one interminable week in 1963 Hong Kong stretches out a conventional but adequate plot—financial deals plus criss-crossing spies—with awesomely tedious, constantly rehashing conversations; and, unlike Tai-Pan and Shogun, there's little Far Eastern exotica here to hold your interest while the padding mounts up. Primary focus is on Ian Duncross, new tai-pan of Hong Kong's oldest trading house—who's hoping to save Noble House from bankruptcy via a joint-venture deal with US entrepreneur Linc Bartlett, just arrived in HK with his right-hand woman, Casey. But Ian's plans are fraught with peril: Bartlett is an unscrupulous type who'll ditch the deal if he can find a better one; Ian's arch-enemy, Quillan Gornt of the Rothwell-Gornt house, is out to snatch up Noble House, with help from some shady bank-collapse and selling-short maneuvers; and Noble House employee John then (soon kidnapped and dead) has been peddling company secrets, even stealing the legendary half-coin (whoever possesses it can demand any favor of the tai-pan). So, while Ian goes from bank to bank and nation to nation looking for bail-out money (in case the Bartlett deal collapses), Clavell piles on the other half of the plot: the presence of secret communist agents in Hong Kong—at Noble House, in the police, even in British Intelligence. And there are also subplots galore: Chinese gold, gun, and drug smugglers; romances (Bartlett and a Eurasian, Casey and everybody); racetrack doings. Eventually, Ian will become entangled in the spy fracas—because he possesses documentary clues to the identity of the "moles"—and eventually Clavell also throws in some Mafia and Red-China touches. But just about everything is rendered moot by a landslide in the last 100 pages—some blessed action after acres of money-talk and who's-the-mole? jabber—and it all finally ends with the surfacing of that half-coin. Flat, colorless characters; slipshod, pulp-mag prose ("Are you the magic I've been seeking forever or just another broad?"); little suspense, violence, or sex. In other words, Dullsville—but the Clavell name will ensure big interest. . . at least until word-of-mouth takes over.
Pub Date: April 30, 1981
ISBN: 0385343264
Page Count: 1136
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1981
McMorris’ strong pacing keeps the two stories zipping along and all its many strings connected for a gratifying conclusion.
Two narratives, one concerning Nazi spies and the other a troubled boy in contemporary Oregon, begin to converge at the halfway point in this novel of espionage, reincarnation and doomed romance.
For the first 100 pages, there is little to connect the two stories, told in alternating chapters. Recently widowed veterinarian Audra is coping with her 7-year-old son’s increasingly erratic behavior. Audra hopes moving cross-country will distance them from the pain of her husband’s death. The other story concerns Vivian, an American diplomat’s daughter, living in London on the eve of World War II. The independent Vivian is conducting an illicit affair with Issak, an American of Swiss descent, who is at university in London. As war becomes inevitable, Issak begs Vivian for help in relocating his family from Germany to Switzerland (he confesses to a lot of holes in his life story: His family is actually German, where they returned after his childhood in America; they’ve been forced by the Nazis to cooperate) by getting information from her father’s intel reports. Vivian is suspicious, but her love for Issak outweighs concerns for international security. As it happens, Vivian is sent back to America, and Issak, who promised to accompany her, is stuck in Germany trying to help his family. Back in Portland, Audra has read a book on the effects of reincarnation on children. The whole thing seems crazy to her, but then the details (Jack’s drawings of Nazis in electric chairs, his obsession with flying, his mumblings in what seem to be German) build a compelling case to a mother at wit’s end. When Audra shares her theories with Jack’s paternal grandparents, they sue her for custody of Jack. Audra feels that her only hope is to research the German name she has, with the help of wounded veteran Sean Malloy, a man Jack is inexplicably drawn to and, unbeknownst to everyone, Vivian’s grandson. Back in the States, Vivian works on a military base as a telephone operator, where she begins a romance with charming military intelligence officer Gene Sullivan. But then one day, Issak contacts her. He is in New York, sent by the Nazis as the head of a secret force sent to invade America. And he asks her to risk everything and trust him again.
McMorris’ strong pacing keeps the two stories zipping along and all its many strings connected for a gratifying conclusion.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7582-8116-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
When the leads are offstage, the novel approaches greatness in its inquiry into what it means to be a good person. But...
A literary war novel with a split personality, about a protagonist who loathes his dual character.
Ambition leads to excess in the sixth novel by Flanagan (Wanting, 2009, etc.), a prizewinning writer much renowned in his native Australia. The scenes of Australian POWs held by the Japanese have power and depth, as do the postwar transformations of soldiers on both sides. But the novel’s deep flaw is a pivotal plot development that aims at the literary heights of Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary but sounds too often like a swoon-worthy bodice ripper. “His pounding head, the pain in every movement and act and thought, seemed to have as its cause and remedy her, and only her and only her and only her,” rhapsodizes Dorrigo Evans, a surgeon who will be hailed as a national hero for his leadership in World War II, though he feels deeply unworthy. His obsession is Amy, a woman he met seemingly by chance, who has made the rest of his existence—including his fiancee—seem drab and lifeless. She returns his ardor and ups the ante: “God, she thought, how she wanted him, and how unseemly and unspeakable were the ways in which she wanted him.” Alas, it is not to be, for she is married to his uncle, and he has a war that will take him away, and each will think the other is dead. And those stretches are where the novel really comes alive, as they depict the brutality inflicted by the Japanese on the POWs who must build the Thai-Burma railway (which gives the novel its title) and ultimately illuminate their different values and their shared humanity.
When the leads are offstage, the novel approaches greatness in its inquiry into what it means to be a good person. But there’s too much “her body was a poem beyond memorising” for the novel to fulfill its considerable ambition.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-35285-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
