Night Lawyer by Michelle Spring

I have just returned from the 107th Grey Cup in Calgary. It was approximately the 19th Cup I have covered in my 42 years of reporting. I thought I would have time to post last week but it was not to be between going to Grey Cup events and writing columns and visiting our sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren. If you want to read my columns they are available at www.humboldtjournal.ca. It was a good week. Not having written a review in the past 8 days I am posting an unposted review I wrote in 2008.

****

16. – 426.) The Night Lawyer by Michelle Spring – A brilliant premise as lovely young English lawyer, Eleanor (Ellie) Porter, starts work for the Chronicle, a London tabloid, as the night lawyer vetting articles at night for the paper. The part-time job suits Ellie as she has just recovered from a nervous breakdown triggered by the betrayal of her lover, William Du Quoyne. Unfortunately, the book did not live up to expectations. The story had really nothing to do with her job. For an intelligent lawyer, who is vigorously training to gain her brown belt in karate, her gushing willingness to resume the relationship with Du Quoyne lacked credibility. Her relationship with a Goth neighbor was bizarre. It did not seem realistic to ignore a stalker for much of the book. Her reluctance to establish a relationship with the handsome dependable editor, Jonathan, because of her hopes to renew her relationship with Du Quoyne was too much the romance novel approach. A casual sexual encounter with her karate instructor just confused me on her relationships with men. There was an interesting twist at the end that brought the themes in the plot together. Too often I found myself doubting the plot.  (Apr. 12/08)

Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan

Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan - The life and times of the super rich Chinese Singaporean families continued to fascinate me.

Several characters spend a great deal of time identifying OAWS (Other Asians in Western Settings).

The impending death of the matriarch, Shang Sui Yi, brings the families physically together. Some might allude to a gathering of vultures as they fly in from Europe, North America, Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand and Mainland China. Each is very conscious about staying in the good graces of Sui Yi. She could change her will at the last moment.

Being rich does not save anyone from the travails of relationships and emotions.

Nick Young, once Sui Yi’s favourite grandson, is unsure about returning to say farewell because she was so cruel to him and Rachel. As he is a fundamentally decent man his decision on returning is no surprise.

Kitty Pong is now married to the extremely rich Jack Bing. The marriage produces the ironic situation that she is stepmother to Collette who is barely younger than Kitty. She remains desperate to achieve iconic status. To her frustration she keeps finding out that spending money does not guarantee position in society.

Eddie Cheng is just as desperate to be recognized as one of the elite. Beyond dressing his children in couture clothing that is embarrassing, Eddie who lacks Kitty’s money, connives away to try to reach the top. His mother can barely understand how he is her son.

Oliver T’sien, urbane and connected everywhere in the world, demonstrates that facades are his best performances.

Astrid Leong in the midst of a tumultous divorce that confirms the rich are just as mean as the common folk when they separate. The dirty tricks are just more expensive and more intrusive.

Once again the matriarchs of the families are the most interesting characters. Nick’s aunts and their contemporaries are often outrageous and never dull.

In the third volume the realities behind great wealth are explored. Some characters have great riches. Others verge on bankruptcy.

The book is the darkest of the trilogy, especially in comparison with the opening book. There were good times, even joy, mixed with cruelty and excess in Crazy Rich Asians. In Rich People Problems the sadness and the tensions of death are illustrations rather than the heart of the problems for the very rich. Life is bleak for many in the book because of their characters. Kwan convincingly shows how money cannot buy happiness. What vast wealth does is mask problems and allow the rich people to avoid dealing with their issues.

As the trilogy drew near its end I wondered how Kwan was going to resolve the rich people problems. I was skeptical of the apparent resolution but Kwan came up with a credible and surprising ending.

If the stories were to return to the spirit of the opening book I would be glad to read more of the adventures of the ultra rich Singapore Chinese families.

****

Kwan, Kevin - (2019) - Crazy Rich Asians and China Rich Girlfriend

Parting With Books Finished

Maury Chaykin playing Nero Wolfe

In my last post I started discussing memories from books I had accumulated in the past that I will be giving up shortly. Most of the books I mentioned did not involve crime fiction. This post will primarily reflect  on older crime fiction.

The Lew Archer series by Ross McDonald was an early favourite. I enjoyed the books but could not see reading them again.

With great reluctance I parted with another pair of series.

Emma Lathen (Mary Jane Latsis and Martha Henissart) wrote a wonderful series featuring New York City banker, John Putnam Thatcher. It was one of the first series to make me realize that crime fiction was not dependent on private detectives and police being the sleuths. I appreciated the thoughtful Thatcher using his intelligence and understanding of banking and business to solve crime. He was impeccably dressed with perfect manners.

Harry Kemelman with his Rabbi David Small series provided interesting mysteries. More intriguing was his portrayal of Jewish faith and how was it lived in the northeastern United States during the latter part of the 20th Century. I learned more about Judaism from this series than any other source. I went through the days of the week and wondered if it would end after the days were exhausted. I was glad when Kemelman used days other than days of the week to continue the series.

I decided to keep my Nero Wolfe books. The rotund, profoundly intelligent, orchid loving Wolfe had a long run with stories written from the 1930’s to the 1970’s. I will always be amazed that Rex Stout would work out the plot for each book in his head then sit down at his typewriter and write the books without revisions or edits. I think I might have figured out  the killer once before the reveal in a meeting at the brownstone. Former blogger and great commenter, Margot Kinberg, knows I read enough of Wolfe and Archie Goodwin to try writing in their voices in comments on her blog.

I had forgotten I had read several of the James Bond books by Ian Fleming. They were alright but not books I would go back to read.

I had not thought about a thriller writer I enjoyed decades ago. I enjoyed several books by Trevanian. Having a hero, Dr. Jonathan Hemlock, who was ambiguous in his morality was not common in the 1970’s. I greatly enjoyed The Eiger Sanction. I found the movie interesting but Clint Eastwood was not my image of Hemlock. On the other hand, Jack Cassidy was a perfect villain portraying the evi Miles Mellough.

I did keep my Dad’s favourite book from later in his life. It is Three Against the Wilderness by Eric Collier. The book is the story of Collier and his family who settled in the interior of B.C. in the 1920’s. They resurected a local ecosystem by building by hand dams where beavers had constructed dams. When government officials saw the results they imported a pair of beavers who led the way in preserving and expanding the ecosystem. My Dad loved the outdoors. He trapped for over 60 years. When his eyesight failed I recorded the book on tape cassettes for him. He listened to my recording of the book several times. He could see in his mind everything Collier had done. 

Sharon and I are also keeping a box of books for children and young adults. Dr. Doolittle was an early favourite of mine and I hope of my granddaughters. When the grandchildren are a little older I hope they will like my Tom Swift Jr. adventures. And we have saved some Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries.

Of the two tubs and boxes of books I am not keeping Jonathan and Michael have advised they are not going to take any of the books. I will see which books Brandi from the office would like to read. The remainder will go to the library for its next book sale.

There are still hundreds of books around the house but I am keeping few of the books I read each year.

Parting With Books Begun

Our downstairs bedroom was renovated this fall. Over the years, especially after our sons left home, it had become a storage room more than a bedroom. Eventually it was full of stuff. Along two walls were bookshelves filled with books, most of them acquired by me 25 - 50 years ago. With the renovation it was a time of reckoning for those books. I had re-read but a fraction of them. We were not going to put up bookshelves again for all of them. It was time to give up a lot of books.

I started going through the tubs and boxes in which the books were stored deciding which would go and which would be kept. How many of them were I likely to re-read? Would either of the boys want any of them?

I knew the books would evoke memories but I had not thought about how going through those books would be a journey through my reading life.

A few books went back as far as high school at St. Peter's College in the late 1960’s. There was a quartet by Sigrid Undset set in 13th Century Norway. My copies show I bought them at the College bookstore. I can remember having to weigh whether I could afford the cost of a new book.

A few more were from undergraduate days at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. Most of those were works of history from my major in history. 

I did find my copy of Guillver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift that I read as part of English 102 in first year university. Father James Grey provided an eclectic mix of fiction and plays for us to read. Reading and reflecting on the original Guillver’s Travels was a revelation. I had only known of it in movie and cartoons. The nuances of the satiric examination of English life and society in the 18th Century showed me the power of fiction.

Father James was the first professor to expect of myself and my classmates that we would read and analyze almost a book or play a week. He loved reflecting and talking about literature. He was a gifted teacher convincing 18 year old students to think about literature. After his death a collection of essays on Father James were published in the book Bush Dweller. I wrote a pair of reviews on the book - https://mysteriesandmore.blogspot.com/2012/02/bush-dweller-essays-in-memory-of-father.html and 

https://mysteriesandmore.blogspot.com/2012/02/bush-dweller-essays-in-memory-of-father_22.html

Seeing Bismarck by A.J.P. Taylor brought back vivid memories of a class in 19th Century European history taught by Professor Ivor Lambi. He was a dynamic lecturer. Everyone enjoyed his dramatic re-telling and explaining of history. His speciality was Bismarck. Every year on Bismarck’s birthday, April 1, he invited all his students to his home to drink beer and celebrate the Iron Chancellor’s birthday. Drinking beer and talking history can be a lot of fun.

I did not find any books from law school. It was a time of limited recreational reading.

Since completing university in 1975 most of my leisure reading has been fiction. At one time I thought I would read about one-third non-fiction to two-thirds fiction. It has actually been 80-85% fiction.

There were two non-crime fiction authors whose books I decided to keep.

There was a period when I enjoyed sweeping sagas. My favourite saga author was R.F. Delderfield. I do not know how accurately he portrayed English life from the middle of the 19th Century to the middle of the 20th Century but I loved his books. I consider A Horseman Riding By the best. I have read and re-read the story of Paul Craddock, a wounded Boer War veteran who buys an estate and lives a full life in the country. Seeing the books prompted me to look for the television series. In the past I had hesitated wondering if the series would do justice to the books. While reading the books I longed to visit the English countryside of A Horseman Riding By. As such a trip seems unlikely I started watching the series tonight. 

I also enjoyed God is an Englishman, the multi-generational story of the Swann family transport business, and To Serve Them All My Days, the story of a teacher in an English boarding school between WW I and WW II.  

The other author is C.S. Forrester. I eagerly read his Horatio Hornblower series. From midshipman to admiral Hornblower served honourably in the Royal Navy when it dominated the oceans of the world early in the 19th Century. Hornblower’s adventures spanned decades of conflict, with France and, sometimes, Spain. No one has written better of life aboard the great men of war ships of that era.

In the mid-1970’s I learned a great deal about United States history by reading the American Bicentennial Series by John Jakes. Also known as the Kent Family Chronicles the sprawling books cover the 200 years the United States had existed as a nation. 

My next post will discuss other books in the tubs and boxes especially crime fiction.

China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan

China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan - I dived into China Rich Girlfriend, the second book of the Crazy Rich Asians series, the day after finishing the opening book. I cannot see a way not to have spoilers in this post as the plot rolls on two years after the end of the first book. They start coming in the next paragraph.

There is another great opening in London with Eleanor coming to the aid of a fabulously weathy Mainlander, Shaoyen Bao. Her son, Carlton, has been injured in a luxury sports car crash in London. Her nephew, the always pretentious Eddie Cheng, is well suited to being the fixer designated by his bank to hush up the accident and its consequences. Eddie spends millions of dollars in the cover up. 

The wealthy Chinese families who left mainland China for Singapore from a few to several generations ago have snobbish negative nicknames for the Chinese who emigrated to other countries. Those who settled in Indonesia are “Chindos”.

And what could be tackier but visually amazing is Kitty Pong, the television soap opera actress and singer, who snared Bernard Tai of the fabulously wealthy Tai family, entering the  auction of magnificient ancient paintings on Chinese scrolls:

…. a strikingly attractive Chines woman with jet-black hair, powdered white skin, and crimson lips, dramatically dressed in a black velvet off-the-shoulder gown, emerged from the crowd. Flanked by two snow-white Russian wolfhounds on long diamond leashes, the lady bega to walk slowly up the central aisle ….

Tens of millions even hundreds of millions are spent at the auction.

In another sign of conspicuous consumption even Eleanor is non-plused when, visiting the Bao’s in their new Singapore apartment, her car and herself are taken up to the apartment in a car elevator. The family has a sky garage. It is hard to conceive of a more powerful symbol of excess.

As I hoped the romance of Rachel Chu and Nicky Young was not thwarted by his mother, Eleanor, and grandmother, Shang Su Yi. They re-united back in New York City after forsaking Singapore at the end of Crazy Rich Asians. Their California wedding is such a contrast to the Singapore extragenza that was Colin Khoo and Araminta Lee’s wedding day.

Finding out Gaoliang Bao is Rachel’s real life father produced a touching scene beween Rachel’s mother and Gaoliang.

Back in China Shaoyen has no interest in meeting, letting alone welcoming, Rachel to their family. Shaoyen is Eleanor’s equal in promoting her view of personal family interests.

When Rachel and Nick meet her half-brother, Carlton, they are introduced to a collection of the wealthiest Mainland Chinese. His celebrity girlfriend, Collette Bing, is the daughter of Jack Bing who is the 3rd or 4th richest man in China. Collette, a fashion fiend, has additional boyfriends beyond Carlton.

The Mainlanders proved to be even more profligate spenders than the Singaporean super-rich.

It is hard to top Jack’s private 747 jet with a dining room, IMAX theatre, 3 story living room, 10 bedroom suites and a fully equipped medical clinic with operating table.

Rachel and Nick join Carlton and Collette and friends and family on the 747 as they fly to Paris for an impromptu spending spree that was an exhausting 72 hours of buying. Why shop when you can buy?

I missed the interaction in Singapore between the families. The Mainlanders are so caught up in consuming though the older ladies also collect hotel soaps and cook on a hot plate in their suites at one of the most exclusive hotels in Paris.

Rachel has come to find spending time with the super-rich Asians an amazing sight seeing experience.

I found it interesting that all of them expect serious relationships to end in marriage and to make their best efforts at having successful marriages. Dating is all about the good times but, for most, when a partner is found there is a genuine commitment. (Eddie with a series of mistresses is an exception.)

As the book went on I felt I was coming to know the characters so well I could anticipate their actions.

I am caught up in the whirl of the crazy rich Asians. I going to immediately read the third book. It is time for some plot lines to be resolved.

Kwan has a breezy easy going style to his writing about the super-rich Chinese of Asia. He effortlesly drew me through the first two books in the series. The successes and problems of the characters feel real. Kwan has created a fascinating saga.

****

Kwan, Kevin - (2019) - Crazy Rich Asians

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

(51 - 1022.) Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan - I am late to CRK. (The characters are fond of initials.) I wish I had started reading the series sooner. I was captured by the end of the first chapter with the purchase of the posh London hotel by the husband of the Singapore Chinese wife who had been rudely excluded from the hotel by a supercilious manager.

The incredibly wealthy Chinese families are fascinating. Their fixation on the material with pretences, sometimes real, to being philosophical or spiritual was so vivid.

I was reminded of the Ava Lee series by Ian Hamilton where Ava is constantly dealing with very rich Chinese families around the world. 

In Crazy Rich Asians for about half of the families excess is a foreign concept. They are buyers not shoppers and the presentation of new acquisitions is a ritual. The remaining half of the families eschew, even disdain, flamboyant displays of wealth and take pride, sometimes excessively, in modesty.

The lovely All American Chinese academic, Rachel Chu, could hardly be more different from the Singapore family of her love, Nicky Young. Focused on her career Chu has no fixation on the material.

Nicky has never let her know his Singapore family is fabulously wealthy before taking her home for the wedding of his best friend, Colin Khoo.

I raced through the pages eager to read of her introduction to his immediate family, the extended relatives and his childhood friends. All the Singaporeans are anxious to see who has won the heart of a very eligible man. 

Nicky’s mother, aunts, great aunts, grandmother and the mothers of his friends are a colourful group of women. As they engage in intrigues Rachel is a puzzle to them for she lacks guile and is indifferent to their great wealth.

Many of the women are cruel in their comments and their actions as they scheme to advance their families and themselves. I hope real life Singapore families are less vicious. I appear to be naive in thinking there are no longer marriages for dynastic purposes.

The men of the families are far less intersting as their lives swirl around making money. 

The wedding of Colin and Araminta Lee is an amazing production. It is hard to fathom the millions spent to create an unforgettable wedding event.

Can all the scheming women break up true love?

The twists and turns in relationships never ended with money and more money and yet more money deeply affecting them.

I watched every episode of Downton Abbey. I have found an Asian saga worthy of being compared to that grand English series. There are mysteries to be read but I have gone to the library and gotten the second in the trilogy. I really want to watch the movie.