White Ghosts - Will Rhode
My first encounter with journalist/editor/writer Will Rhode was via his debut novel, Paperback Raita. Its hero is one Joshua King, an Englishman bumming around in Delhi, occasionally writing articles for a newspaper and trying to find inspiration for the bestselling novel that he has to write in order to gain his £5 million inheritance. He hears rumours about a drug smuggling operation in Rajasthan, so he investigates and gets caught up in whirlwind of drugs, money and the Indian nouveau riche.
The book was decently written, but I found it hard to sympathise with a protagonist who spends most of the book whinging about the situation he's placed himself in and resorts to selling drugs to little kids when he gets stranded with no money. A review on Amazon describes this situation as a black joke. Maybe, except it wasn't funny, it was shocking.
Rhode's second novel, White Ghosts, features more English twenty-somethings bitching about the pointlessness of their lives, this time in Hong Kong. I have a feeling that his next book will be set in New York but I'm hoping to be proved wrong. Here we have Mike, who has gone over to Hong Kong to rescue his friend Sean from committing suicide after Sean breaks up with his Eurasian girlfriend Candy (incidentally a girl that Mike has fancied for years). On his arrival, he finds that he's wasted his time since Sean and Candy are back together and the room he was promised in Sean's flat has been given to someone he hates. Brilliant. Despite those minor setbacks, Mike decides to stay on as filth (Failed In London Try Hong Kong) and get a job as a journalist. *sighs*
From there, we are treated to a long series of vignettes about various aspects of ex-pat life in Hong Kong prior to Handover, as seen from the perspectives of Mike, Candy and Sean. Appearances to the contrary, it's not all fun and games going to endless parties and taking loads of drugs. Being a friend of the popular Sean, Mike gets invited to all the hot social events but has trouble reconciling his view of Hong Kong as being false with the exaggerated generousity and friendliness of his old university mates. Candy is struggling with her heritage and her family's expectation that she will ditch her white friends and marry a rich Chinese man. Sean is living the high life of a broker with cash to burn because if he stops and thinks for a second he'll crash back into depression. Amongst all of this are wedged flashbacks to the public school boarding days of Marland and Clarke (aka Mike and Sean) where we get to see the root cause of Mike's weakness and his devotion to Sean, and something darker besides that.
Overall, the characters are far less irritating than those of Paperback Raita and the short snippets of life in Hong Kong are well-written and entertaining. The problem is simply that it was all too aimless. A tragedy is laid out at the onset, so one assumes the 'thriller' aspect of the story (as mentioned in various blurbs dotted on the book) comes from determining who did the deed and why. Unfortunately, the plot necessary to set up this event only kicks into gear in the last third of the book, by which point I was frankly sick of reading about how going to an endless series of parties and taking loads of drugs was really quite exhausting for the soul. The suggested culprit at the beginning is later shown to be lacking a spinal cord early on, so who the killer was not was never in any question. The book should either have been shorter, or developed more.
Okay. Enough of the negative. What the book does effectively is to explore the oddly intimate relationship between Mike and Sean, which ranges from a childhood exploration of sexuality at boarding school through to Mike's devotion/dependance on Sean, culminating in full-blown, though minimally described sex in Macao. Rhode talks about including the sex scene in an Observer article, and his reason for keeping that particular scene brief. He also says that his next book will be set in New York since direct experience is the way forward when writing books. Gah.
Will Rhode has talent and a eye for sharply written snapshots of 20-something life, but he needs to spend a little more time working on a proper plot to avoid writing another novel that is as vacuous as the lives of his characters.
The book was decently written, but I found it hard to sympathise with a protagonist who spends most of the book whinging about the situation he's placed himself in and resorts to selling drugs to little kids when he gets stranded with no money. A review on Amazon describes this situation as a black joke. Maybe, except it wasn't funny, it was shocking.
Rhode's second novel, White Ghosts, features more English twenty-somethings bitching about the pointlessness of their lives, this time in Hong Kong. I have a feeling that his next book will be set in New York but I'm hoping to be proved wrong. Here we have Mike, who has gone over to Hong Kong to rescue his friend Sean from committing suicide after Sean breaks up with his Eurasian girlfriend Candy (incidentally a girl that Mike has fancied for years). On his arrival, he finds that he's wasted his time since Sean and Candy are back together and the room he was promised in Sean's flat has been given to someone he hates. Brilliant. Despite those minor setbacks, Mike decides to stay on as filth (Failed In London Try Hong Kong) and get a job as a journalist. *sighs*
From there, we are treated to a long series of vignettes about various aspects of ex-pat life in Hong Kong prior to Handover, as seen from the perspectives of Mike, Candy and Sean. Appearances to the contrary, it's not all fun and games going to endless parties and taking loads of drugs. Being a friend of the popular Sean, Mike gets invited to all the hot social events but has trouble reconciling his view of Hong Kong as being false with the exaggerated generousity and friendliness of his old university mates. Candy is struggling with her heritage and her family's expectation that she will ditch her white friends and marry a rich Chinese man. Sean is living the high life of a broker with cash to burn because if he stops and thinks for a second he'll crash back into depression. Amongst all of this are wedged flashbacks to the public school boarding days of Marland and Clarke (aka Mike and Sean) where we get to see the root cause of Mike's weakness and his devotion to Sean, and something darker besides that.
Overall, the characters are far less irritating than those of Paperback Raita and the short snippets of life in Hong Kong are well-written and entertaining. The problem is simply that it was all too aimless. A tragedy is laid out at the onset, so one assumes the 'thriller' aspect of the story (as mentioned in various blurbs dotted on the book) comes from determining who did the deed and why. Unfortunately, the plot necessary to set up this event only kicks into gear in the last third of the book, by which point I was frankly sick of reading about how going to an endless series of parties and taking loads of drugs was really quite exhausting for the soul. The suggested culprit at the beginning is later shown to be lacking a spinal cord early on, so who the killer was not was never in any question. The book should either have been shorter, or developed more.
Okay. Enough of the negative. What the book does effectively is to explore the oddly intimate relationship between Mike and Sean, which ranges from a childhood exploration of sexuality at boarding school through to Mike's devotion/dependance on Sean, culminating in full-blown, though minimally described sex in Macao. Rhode talks about including the sex scene in an Observer article, and his reason for keeping that particular scene brief. He also says that his next book will be set in New York since direct experience is the way forward when writing books. Gah.
Will Rhode has talent and a eye for sharply written snapshots of 20-something life, but he needs to spend a little more time working on a proper plot to avoid writing another novel that is as vacuous as the lives of his characters.