Good idea, never convincingly realised
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As a book about Hong Kong from the 1930s to the turn of the 21st Century this book could have been so interesting, indeed some parts are. The novel is divided into four sections each of which focuses on a different character intertwined into the plot. Hong Kong forms the main stage but lots of other places around the world also feature.
There are many problems preventing the novel ever being really successful. This is a real shame because I really like the idea behind the story and kept trying to enjoy it but lots of things got in the way.
First of all the characters are wholly unconvincing. Lanchester has done a lot of work to create an interesting cast of people but then fails to provide the detail that would really make them work. There is so much potential here from the men and women populating the end of Empire in the 1930s to the fashionable rich set in Hong Kong of the mid nineties. Each character is glibly introduced and packaged into a neat pigeon hole. We know their type and they never develop beyond this. This is especially true of the Chinese characters in the book that seem to merge together and fade into the background to become as much a part of the scenery as Hong Kong itself. As for the main characters, we first meet Tom Stewart for example, when he is a teenager but he is still the same man in his eighties after living through some of the major events of the twentieth Century.
The plot of the book is at once quite predictable and yet unconvincing. There are a number of ridiculous events. Tom Stewart learns how to speak Cantonese in six weeks before he has even set foot in Hong Kong. This same character must be extremely quick on the uptake as later on he again undertakes a crash course (in banking this time for no discernable reason other than to put him in the right place at the right time for certain narrative events.) Lancaster has tried to tie characters and events neatly together but the whole effect seems contrived.
Lanchester could have done with completely deleting the character of Dawn Stone. He should have put far more detail and effort into describing his other characters that after all are interesting snap shots. He also should have expanded on the events of Tom Stewart's life; it is disappointing how brief the description of his war years are, especially his life in a Japanese camp.
Added to this is the clumsy style of the prose itself. The sentences clunk along mundanely with little imagination and the occasional ugly clumsy phrase or sentence.
Overall this novel is a good idea that has not been fully realised.
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A global idea
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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 as British merchants and adventurers became international drug dealers to vulnerable China, people with wealth beyond measure push people around the chessboards of their interests, occasionally enthroning a pawn they might even have previously sacrificed.
As in A Debt To Pleasure, John Lanchester has us enter the world of an anti-hero. The character that drives events in Fragrant Harbour is but a name for most of the book. He is cold, calculating, driven by raw, undiluted self-interest. In this he is perhaps no different from anyone else. It's just that he is more successful at it, and thus less willing to risk that success. And he prevails. The emperor is far away. The mountains are high. In his case, he is the emperor and he owns the mountains. Power lives in pockets and, in a globalised economy, we are all immigrants, even in our homes. What a superb book!
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An excellent read
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This book is hugely enjoyable. It is well-written and interestingly constructed. It is also very atmospheric and thought-provoking.
The conclusion is a little enigmatic and I wouldn't have minded a few extra pages to learn how Tom reacted to his Grandson's news. Maybe there is a sequal in this - taking the Grandson's life forward in the modern Asia?
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So much to keep your interest
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I had never read one of John Lanchester's books before, but was attracted to 'Fragrant Harbour' as it had Hong Kong at the centre of the novel. Having spent time there, I found the descriptions of HK to be just as I remember the place, but even if I hadn't seen it for myself the writing is so good that it would have been easy to imagine the street scenes for myself. The story covers the recent history of Hong Kong, from the 1930s to just beyond the handover, and is mostly told through the eyes of Tom, a Brit who moved there as a young man and became a successful hotelier. His relationship with Maria is intriguing (if at times a little incredible), but it was his general descriptions of life as a Briton in Hong Kong that I found the most interesting. Like other reviewers, I felt the character of Dawn Stone to be a little unnecessary - she could easily have been introduced at the end of the book without detracting from the story - but this is a minor grumble. I very much enjoyed this, and will be looking for further books by John Lanchester in the future.
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A taste of Hong Kong
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Whist reading Fragrant Harbour, I felt that I was actually in Hong Kong and a part of the story. The author has demonstrated his extensive knowledge and experience about the culture and history surrounding Hong Kong. It is interesting and fascinating to absorb factual details about what life is actually like in Hong Kong. You do not have to actually been to Hong Kong for grasping this novel. It is like a travel guide to a certain extent, as you are provided with much information as possible about the main attractions of Hong Kong.
The storyline is obviously the key component on which novel should be purely judged. In terms of content, Fragrant Habour is about a new era facing Hong Kong, in which Britain handed control of Hong Kong to China in 1997. Hong Kong was a former colony of Britain. This is a significant history landmark, as China gained control. Today, Hong Kong still has a separate entity from China. Fragrant Harbour provides three prospectives leading from this era. This include journalist Dawn Stone to Hong Kong businessman Matthew Ho and travels backs in the past to Tom Stewart.
The narration for each individual character is powerful and rich in details. From reading three accounts, we learn about the famous landmarks in the city, culture, the triads and colonial links with Britain. As reader, we start to appreciate the life of each character and the difficulties endured in Hong Kong. For example the Japanesse occupation added fear to Tom Stewart, corruption made business unattractive and ugly venture in Hong Kong for Matthew Ho.
Overall, an enjoyable novel to read and gives you a taste of Hong Kong. The narration is first class. What lets the novel down a little, I feel is the story could have been developed a bit further. The ending of the novel remained still open, as in the sense there was no real conclusion which dissapointed me.
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