#216
Title: The Harmony Silk Factory
Author: Tash Aw
Publisher: Berkley
Year: 2005
Country: Malaysia
413 pages
Aw's first novel is an extended study of one man, Johnny Lim. Stories about Johnny are told by three narrators in three sections. Each has a complex emotional relationship with Johnny. His disaffected son, eager to expose his father's crimes; his wife Snow, whose diary reveals a more tentative and vulnerable man; and Peter, a British friend who has fled to Malaysia but finds he cannot escape himself. Aw does a good job of differentiating each narrator's voice and preoccupations. There isn't a lot of action here, or even resolution. Rather, the pleasure of the story is in the reader's accretion of knowledge about Johnny, and the somewhat voyeuristic satisfaction of seeing more perspectives than each narrator.
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