Publisher Description

A new Paddleless Press edition of Timothy Mo's classic novel. Set primarily in Hong Kong, it tells the story of the relationship between a Cantonese family, the Poons, and Wallace Nolasco, a young man of Portuguese descent, who marries into the family only to find that they are not as wealthy as local gossip had given him to believe.

Notes

A new edition of his classic novel, set mainly in Hong Kong, and telling a complex story of family relationships.

Kirkus UK Review

Winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, Mo's gem of a book is bursting with genuinely original comic characters. Wallace Nolasco, like the legendary King of the monkeys continually gets up to 'bad mischiefs'; but unusually he not only manages to get out of trouble, he usually to come up trumps. Wallace marries into the Chinese Poon family and finds himself pitched into a continual battle of wits with Mr Poon, the head of the household, his son Ah Lung and the rest of the family and servants. He lights a fire and is in trouble because Mr Poon keeps his gold ingots up the chimney. Wallace, the superlative subversive, encourages his nephews to ask questions of their teachers and they return home with their mouths sealed with sticking plaster. When Mr Poon fails to hand over May Ling's dowry, Wallace manages to disrupt the entire household's longstanding rhythm. Becoming the fall guy in Mr Poon's scheme to win government contracts, he is banished to the countryside where he causes even more hilarious havoc, including accidentally desecrating an ossuary and blowing up a flooded valley with explosives. Mo deftly invests the tiniest incident with hilarity. This is comic writing of the highest degree. (Kirkus UK)

Kirkus US Review

On the heels of Mo's third novel (the dazzling, seriocomic An Insular Possession, p. 88) comes the American debut of his first novel, a slim and engaging comedy-of-manners set in Hong Kong. Using his part-Portuguese ancestry as leverage, ambitious yet congenial Wallace Nolasco marries his way into the wealthy Chinese household of the Poons. But to his dismay he finds that the Poon patriarch, Old Mr. Poon, is a miser who keeps his house ill-heated and feeds his family only one full meal a day. Wallace snipes back by drawing his bride, May Ling, away from the house and into the social orbit of his friends, and finally by stealing an antique watch Poon had promised, but never delivered, as a dowry. Mo's characters speak in Hong-Kong fractured English ("Eiyah! What you said to Ah Lung?") as he chronicles the intra-familial feuding in deft comic strokes, resorting at times to slapstick or even puns to punch up his narrative (a friend of Wallace's mistakes an Italian waiter's"cinque" for the pejorative "Chink," precipitating a wild, angry scene). After several years of bickering, Wallace takes a government clerical position that Mr. Poon promptly subverts into a base for kickbacks; when the law gets on Wallace's tail, Mr. Pooh exiles him and May Ling to a nearby rural village. There, Wallace finally proves his mettle, persuading the village to build a marina that becomes a booming tourist attraction. Eventually Wallace and wile return to the city; and when Mr. Poon dies, Wallace takes over his businesses: like the Monkey King of Chinese legend, he suffers, survives and, in the end, triumphs. Probably too parochial in subject to appeal to a wide readership, this offbeat social satire will, however, amuse those who dip into its stylish, arch pages. (Kirkus Reviews)

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