The Glass Kingdom by Lawrence Osborne (Hogarth)

Bangkok is where people come from all over the world to reinvent themselves so it’s no wonder that this is where Sarah Mullins chooses to become Sarah Talbot Jennings. She’s arrived with a suitcase full of cash that she received for letters between famous people--ones that she forged herself. She needs a place to hide until the resulting furor dies down and Bangkok, she decides, is a “chaotic, lawless choice.”

She settles into one of the city’s newly gentrified neighborhoods, one characterized by the “affable stability” of “yoga studios and espresso bars.” Presiding over this veneer of hipster chic is The Kingdom, a somewhat down-at-the-heel residential complex consisting of four towers, each twenty-one stories high. It’s the perfect place for Sarah to park her money for a while while she figures out her next move. What she hadn’t counted on was that she’s landed in a community of drifters and grifters who have come from all over the world, looking for their next target, be it another city or another sucker. 

Sarah, with her aura of wealth and her claims of being a “trust fund baby,” is the perfect victim. The women who befriend her are ones who are experts in decodng the nuances of social class and this American newcomer lacks the manners and style of the upper echelons. It’s an easy matter to figure out where her money comes from. All her neighbors have to do is persuade Sarah to hire the same maid whom they recommend and all use. There are no secrets that a Bangkok maid can’t uncover and this one quickly finds the suitcase laden with bundles of cash.

Suddenly things begin to unravel with alarming speed. Political demonstrations spring up all over Bangkok, threatening to unsettle the capitol and launch a revolution. A curfew goes into effect and power outages throw much of the city into darkness. During a black-out, one of Sarah’s neighbors shows up, covered in blood. She has just killed her physically abusive boyfriend. Sarah, steeped in the female solidarity that infects every American woman, becomes an accomplice, and as she does, reality begins to dissolve.

Many foreigners in Bangkok lead liquid lives. They have no rights and they have no roots. Without much language or cultural understanding, they float in a strange netherworld where paranoia coexists with cluelessness. Sarah, unanchored by any previous form of reality, finds herself in a place where nothing seems real and ghosts are a common feature. Spirit houses, shrines, trees that are protected by presiding spirits, a young girl who appears and disappears in odd places and at odd intervals, the woman whom Sarah assists in the aftermath of the murder who vanishes as thoroughly as if she too had been killed, the spectral flowers that gleam pale in the darkness of the nocturnal power failures--all of these things conspire to evoke an atmosphere of dread. 

Atmosphere is what Lawrence Osborne is known for and he’s become a master of it. In The Glass Kingdom, he anchors this with a skimpy plot, undeveloped characters, a shaky command of dialogue and presents it as all surrealism. However atmosphere is almost enough to carry the book--don’t read it at night, alone. Without ever creating a tangible threat, the gothic darkness of a lonely existence and a cloud of invisible menace is almost overwhelming. 

The problem with inventing a new life is it’s as easy to erase as it is to change. Disappeared, has she? Who cares? Osborne, perhaps without knowing it, has written a cautionary fairy tale with a concluding moral that’s as plausible as it is horrifying.~Janet Brown

Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin (Henry Holt and Company)

“There are the goodbyes and then the fishing out of the bodies—everything in between is speculation.” But “in between” lie three long months and within that space, Anh loses her childhood. 

She and her two brothers are sent away from Vietnam on an eight-day voyage to Hong Kong, aboard a “rotting and cracked boat.” Her parents and her other siblings follow them later, an act that divides the family in two: the survivors and the dead. Three months after she last saw them, Anh is taken to a morgue to identify bodies that were once the other half of her family.

She becomes the only security her brothers will ever have and her spur-of-the-moment decision to lie to an official at the Kai Tak refugee camp determines what their lives will become. Angered that an uncle who had successfully journeyed to America had given her father encouragement to follow him and die, when asked if she has any family abroad, Anh says “No.”

This one syllable puts her and her brothers on a plane to another refugee camp, Sopley, in England. Caught in the exclusionist policies of Margaret Thatcher, it will be two years before the children have a home of their own. At last they have a bed they can all lie upon at the same time with their arms outstretched, a luxurious feeling after sleeping in the narrow bunks of Kai Tak and Sopley.

They aren’t unaccompanied, although they will never know it. Their little brother watches them as they slowly acculturate to their London slum neighborhood. “When they laugh, it’s like a dagger in my heart,” he says, “It’s lonely and tiring to be a ghost…invisible and voiceless.”

But his voice permeates the narrative, along with the future voice of Anh’s daughter who searches for her family’s history, “trying to carve out a story between the macabre and the fairy tale.” A weird counterpoint is given in the words of an aging American soldier who has been given a key role in Operation Wandering Soul, eleven years before Anh and her brothers left Vietnam. He and a comrade are sent out into the battle zone with a cassette player and a portable PA system “to scare the living shit out of those gooks, their lieutenant tells them. When they reach their destination and press “play,” wails, screams and sobs echo into the jungle. Years later they’re told those were meant to be the voices of those Vietnamese who died far from home, wandering souls who yearned to be buried in the places where they belong.

The story of how Anh’s wandering soul finds a home for herself, her brothers, and the part of her family who lie buried under Hong Kong soil, is wrapped in a collage of history: the terrible story of over 1000 Vietnamese who are taken by Thai pirates to Koh Kra, where 160 are killed and 37 women are raped by 500 men over a period of 22 days; a letter written by Margaret Thatcher to a Vietnamese family, a string of empty words belied by minutes from an informal meeting where the Prime Minister clearly states her reluctance to take in refugees who are not white; a study of Prolonged Grief Disorder, grief that lasts beyond a few months and “signals a state of mental illness.”

Anh’s daughter is told by a therapist that her family heritage “is one of death.” Saying she doesn’t want to write about death, she’s forced to confront it as she searches for her family’s history. At last she decides to keep the deaths, keep the suffering, add some joy, and ends her book with her mother in a garden of blooming roses, thinking it is “quite a wonderful thing to be alive.~Janet Brown

Fragrant Heart : A Tale of Love, Life and Food in Asia by Miranda Emmerson (Summersdale)

Miranda Emmerson is a British writer. In 2008, she and her partner decide to have one last fling before settling down and having kids. They decide to spend one year living and working abroad in China. 

Although she and her partner Chris choose to live in China for a year, they also travel to Vietnam and the Mekong Delta, then go west to Cambodia, enjoying the cuisines of Phnom Phen and Tonle Sap Lake. They continue their travels to central Thailand and to the island of Penang and the city of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. 

Emmerson’s love for Chinese food started when she was still a youngster living in Isleworth, a small suburb of London, England. She describes Fragrant Heart as “a book about travel but it’s also about food. The experience of food, the discovery of it, the sensuality of eating strange things in strange lands and falling in love with the taste of other people’s countries”. 

When she was growing up, Emmerson’s family celebrated family occasions at a Chinese restaurant called Mann’s Beijing. When the family had a bit of extra money, birthdays would be celebrated at the Four Regions Restaurant in the neighboring town of Richmond. Emmerson thought, “If Italian food tasted of home and family, Chinese food tasted of exoticism and success”. 

Her love of Chinese food would grow after meeting her friend Anne whose parents were from Hong Kong. They work at a Chinese takeaway and she is mesmerized by the speed and efficiency of how the staff worked. However, it’s living in China that really “turned her on to the possibilities and varieties of Chinese food. To start to understand the different regions and thousand different dishes that could emerge from a single wok”. 

Emmerson does remind readers that Fragrant Heart is not only a culinary travelogue but is also a memoir of facing the unknown, of escaping big decisions she and her partner have yet to make, and of dealing with life in general. 

Emmerson is also a vegetarian. She asks the reader, “Are you vegetarian?” and follows up with, “Want some advice? Don’t go to China!”.  She says, “the irony for the vegetarian traveler in Asia is that as a relatively wealthy visitor to restaurants and towns in the cities, everything comes cooked in and garnished with meat”. 

Their first stop in their travels of food and life starts at a hostel in Beijing. China. It is the year the city hosted the Olympics. The owners of the Red Lantern House hostel are hosting a party for their guests. They are teaching the guests how to make New Year’s dumplings that are shaped like crescent moons. And that is only the beginning. 

Emmerson and her partner move from the hostel and find an apartment in Beijing. They’re introduced to hot-pot meals, eat noodles and rice at an outdoor stall, and her partner takes a Mandarin cooking class (Chris is proficient in four languages and has a degree in Russian from Oxford). 

They eat pho and nem cuon in Vietnam. Pho is a dish made with rice noodles in a broth with either chicken or beef and herbs while nem cuon is Vietnamese spring roll. They ate some grilled chicken and tofu kebabs in Cambodia which were topped with tirk salouk swai, a mango salsa. They introduce the readers to Peranakan cuisine (also known as Baba Nyonya) while in Malaysia before making their way back to China. 

Emmerson’s prose is easy to read and her adventures in Asia with her partner Chris are filled with excitement and fear. Their love of food and culture might inspire you to travel abroad and try things you’ve never eaten before. If international travel is out of your budget, there are always the ethnic restaurants you check out in your own neighborhood. 

Happy eating and happy travels!! What more can you ask for? ~Ernie Hoyt

Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon (HarperCollins)

If it hadn’t been for America’s love of Broadway musicals after World War II, Anna Leonowens would have sunk into well-deserved obscurity long ago. The author of two memoirs of her five-year stay in what was then called Siam, back in the middle of the nineteenth century, Mrs. Leonowens had a brief flurry of fame with her stories of teaching English to the many children of King Rama IV. She faded from public attention until Margaret Landon, the wife of an American missionary who had lived in the south of Thailand for ten years, was handed a copy of An English Governess at the Siamese Court. Both this and its successor, The Romance of the Harem, had been out of print for more than fifty years but they captured Landon’s imagination. 

After an impressive amount of research, she came out with a fictionalized version of Anna’s time in Siam, Anna and the King of Siam. It became a bestseller and drew the attention of theatrical impresarios and Hollywood moguls, ensuring that Anna’s fame spread worldwide. The Broadway show tunes became enduring classics and Deborah Kerr, sumptuously dressed in Victorian gowns made from Thai silk, made Anna an unforgettable historical figure. As she swooped across the throne room floor with her royal partner, Yul Brynner, singing Shall We Dance, who could fail to be enchanted? Thailand, aka Siam, that’s who.

Mrs. Leonowen’s books, Margaret Landon’s novel, and all three of the movies that stemmed from the Broadway musical are banned in Thailand because the portrayal of King Rama IV in these works insults the memory of the monarch and the institution of the monarchy. Even in this century, when few people in other countries know or care about the “English Governess,” her name is still reviled in the Kingdom of Thailand and books refuting her claims are still popular. 

Margaret Landon had tracked down copies of Anna’s two books, met Anna’s granddaughter who gave her copies “of letters and other pertinent material,” and unearthed a volume in the Library of Congress that was a collection of letters written by Rama IV.  Even so, the book she wrote, she confessed,  was “seventy-five per cent fact, and twenty-five per cent fiction based on fact.” (Since she accepted Anna’s invented facts with touching faith and a certain amount of naivete, her figures of fact and fiction are a bit skewed.)

Eighty years later, her novel is almost unreadable. The best parts of it are the portions that draw upon facts. Unfortunately they’re sunk by the remaining portion of the book that’s fictional, and by Landon’s stilted writing, which was probably modeled on Anna’s Victorian literary style. 

Within the supposed facts, there are strange glitches. Anna’s son is often referred to as Boy, with no explanation. Since he’s originally introduced as Louis, this is a weird and puzzling insertion. A Thai prince who appears at the novel’s beginning as an absurd and frightening figure later shows up as an honored physician.  His fluency in English and  the fact that he was the first Thai doctor to use quinine as a treatment for malaria is never mentioned to counteract that first buffoonish portrayal. Another bizarre episode implies that a diamond ring given to Anna by the King was an indication that he wished to add her to his collection of wives, Credulity is completely strained by the story of a royal wife who becomes so proficient in English under Anna’s tutelage that she’s able to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and then translates it into Thai. Most shocking is a graphic description of flesh being cut from the body of a revered monk and fed to the temple dogs before the corpse is cremated, a disgusting bit of pure invention that Landon must have known was false. 

The most engaging portions of the novel are the letters written by Rama IV. The King’s English is idiosyncratic but his sentences are much more readable than the overwrought effusions that are excerpted from Anna’s own letters. 

Dramatic episodes of cruelty toward women of “the harem” are interspersed with lengthy and dull accounts of colonial incursions upon the sovereignty of Siam. Slavery weighs heavily upon Anna’s heart and mind and much later, when King Rama V, her former student, emancipates the slaves of Thailand, she gleefully takes credit for this. 

It’s difficult to understand how such a priggish woman could have given birth to so many versions of her invented life. Strangely, the life of her son Louis has been ignored, although it’s far more worthy of a book. Years after his mother took him back to England, he returned to Thailand as an adult, became a captain in the King’s Royal Cavalry, and founded a company that still exists in Thailand under the name of Louis T. Leonowens Co, Ltd. While Anna’s name is excoriated, it’s delightful to think that Thailand has kept “Boy”  as a part of his chosen country’s history.~Janet Brown

The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi, translated by Cathy Hirano (Pushkin)

Naoko Uehashi is a well-known fantasy and children’s book author in her native Japan. She has won many awards including the international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2014. The chairman of the International Board on Books for Young People, Maria Jesus Gil, has said of Uehashi, “Uehashi tells stories that are replete with imagination, culture and the beauty of a sophisticated process and form. Her literary subjects are based on ancient Japanese mythology and science-fiction fantasy that are deeply rooted in human reality”. 

The Beast Player is the English translation of the first two books in her series 獣の奏者: 闘蛇編と王獣編 (Kemono no Soja : Toda hen and Oju hen). Originally published in the Japanese language in 2006 by Kodansha Bunko, it is translated by Cathy Hirano, translator of a number of Marie Kondo books that have gone on to become international bestsellers.

In the world of The Beast Player, the kingdom of Lyoza is ruled by Yojeh, the divine ruler of the kingdom. Protecting the land of Lyoza is the Aluhan (Grand Duke) who is responsible for protecting Lyoza. There are also the Se Zan who guard the Yojeh. 

Elin is the ten-year-old daughter of Sohyon who comes from a nomadic tribe called the Ahlyo. Sohyon  became an outcast when she married outside her people. She and her daughter live with the Toda stewards, the toda being dragon-like water serpents. Sohyon is the head Toda doctor. It is her duty to take care of the kiba, the fiercest of all the toda. Everyone knows that toda cannot be tamed, but they can be controlled by a silent whistle, a whistle that Sohyon doesn’t really like to use. 

One night, all of the kiba mysteriously die. Sohyon is blamed for their death and is sentenced to be eaten alive by wild toda. On the day of her execution, Elin tries to save her. The Aluhan and their warriors were willing to let the child die as well as they considered her to be Akun Meh Chai, the “devil-bitten child”. 

As Elin tries to help her mother, they can see the wild toda coming for them. Sohyon tells her daughter, “Elin, you must never do what I am going to do now. To do so is to commit a mortal sin”. The last thing she says to her daughter is, “I want you to survive. And to find happiness”. She then uses her fingers to whistle and the piercing sound made all the toda stop immediately. 

As Sohyon continues to whistle, the toda came near. Sohyon sets Elin on one of the toda’s backs and said, “Grip hard with both legs and don’t let go of the horns”. She then yelled, “Go! Don’t look back. Go!”. Elin manages to escape but witnesses her mother being devoured by the wild toda.

Elin ends up stranded on the shore of a land far from her own home. She is found by Joeun, a solitary beekeeper. He takes her in and raises her as his own child. He senses that she is different. He also notices the color of her eyes. They are green. Only the Ahlyo have such green eyes and they are rarely seen by others. 

One summer as Joeun takes Elin to the mountains, they see Royal Beasts in the wild. Elin is captivated by them. They appear to be large dragons that are the symbol of the Yojeh. The toda are the natural enemy of the Royal Beasts. However, the Royal Beasts can render the toda immobile by the whistling sound they make. 

As Elin grows older, Joeun sends her to Kazalumu Royal Beast Sanctuary and learns to become a beast doctor. Unknown to Elin, she becomes a pawn in a political struggle between the Aluhan and the Yojeh. There’s also a plot to assassinate the Yojeh as well. 

Uehashi’s epic saga can be enjoyed by children and adults alike. You will meet a whole host of characters which you will become to love (or hate) as the case may be. The story teaches one compassion and cooperation. It also focuses on ambition, greed, corruption, and the pursuit of power. The saga continues in the sequel The Beast Warrior. ~Ernie Hoyt

Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone (University of Washington Press)

Monica Sone is six when her parents tell her she is Japanese. She’s been told stories about her parents’ early lives in Japan, but she and her siblings are Yankees, born in America. Only when she and her brother learn that soon they’ll spend their after-school playtime in a Japanese school every day, does she realize she’s part of a culture that until now hadn’t intruded on her life.

A scrappy little hoyden who lives in her father’s Skid Row hotel, Monica’s playground is on the streets and alleyways of a rundown Seattle neighborhood. Taverns, a burlesque house, and businesses owned by the Japanese parents of her friends make up her landscape. Suddenly she’s in Nihon Gakko where she receives rigorous lessons in the Japanese language and etiquette. It’s a place, Monica decides, where “the model child is one with deep rigor mortis…no noise, no trouble, no backtalk.”

This is in preparation for a family trip to Japan where Monica’s youngest brother has a shrieking tantrum when he’s told to remove his shoes before entering a hotel dining room and Monica slaps one of her cousins during an argument, shocked when the girl doesn’t fight back. At the Nikko Shrine, she rebels when told that no one but the  Emperor is allowed to set foot on the sacred Shinkyo Bridge. Lagging behind her father, she slips under the rope barrier, tries to run up the curving arch of the bridge, and fails, seen only by horrified strangers. When a group of village boys gang up on her brother, Monica dives into the fray, scratching, biting, and pulling hair in “a marvelous free-for-all.” She returns to America knowing that in Japan she is “an alien.” The country where she was born, with its “people of different racial extractions,” is her home.

As she grows older, fissures threaten her sense of security. When her youngest sister grows ill and her parents want to find a house near the beach for the summer, they discover that even places with vacancy signs are no longer available. Finally they’re told “I’m sorry but we don’t want Japs around here,” and Monica feels “raw angry fire flash through my veins.” When she enters adolescence, she and her friends are barred from a swimming pool and leave, protesting “But we’re American citizens” as they drive away.

She is Nisei, an American-born Japanese, with a strong belief in equality and justice. While her Issei parents, born in Japan, had grown up steeped in acceptance and resignation, Monica refuses to submit to prejudice. Then an evening’s choir practice is interrupted when a boy bursts in announcing that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and America is at war. Within two months, Executive Order Number 9066 turns Monica’s American birthright into a cruel hoax. She and her family are packed off to an army barracks where they wait for the orders that will send them to a relocation camp. Anger and rebellion are useless now, and Monica faces the truth that “my citizenship wasn’t real after all.”Perhaps neither were “the ideas and ideals of democracy.”

Memoirs are the heart and soul of history and Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter illuminates the lives of Japanese Americans in the first half of the 20th Century with a bright and stabbing light. Her journey from a peaceful childhood into the betrayal of promises in a country at war is beautifully told and presents a scalding indictment. Her conclusion holds words from an Issei neighbor that sums up the difference between the two generations: “You young ones feel everything so keenly. It’s good, but sometimes you must suffer more for it.” More than any class Monica took when she reluctantly attended Nihon Gakka, it’s the time she spends with her parents and other Issei in the relocation camp that makes her know she’s both American and Japanese, integrated into “a whole person.”~Janet Brown