April 4, 2011
Young's vexingly inert debut presents the post-WWII history of Jamaica as told in the pidgin English of Yang Pao, a Sun Tzuâquoting strongman in Kingston's Chinatown. After arriving in the city in 1938, Pao rises through the ranks of the local underworld to run a protection and stolen goods racket, and falls in love with Gloria, a beautiful prostitute who bears him a child. But his ambitions lead him away from Gloria and toward Fay, the daughter of one of Kingston's richest Chinese men. After he marries Fay, Pao's business empire grows, but his personal life proves disastrous, leading him to consult The Art of War for advice. The unusual cultural perspective gives the novel's early pages some fire, but the decision to structure the book, particularly in the final third, around milestones of recent Jamaican history, makes the book feel more like an informal history, especially as political and economic minutiae of Jamaica's independence from Britain ("By the mid 1950s Jamaica was on the up, especially because they discover the bauxite") become more prevalent. Once the focus settles more on Jamaican politics than the characters, the story dries up and never recovers, and what felt at the outset like an intriguing epic ends up dull.
July 1, 2011
Against a backdrop of Jamaican history, a likable Chinese-Jamaican runs rackets in this eye-opening, rambunctious debut.
Pao is just a kid when he arrives in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1938. His father has been killed by European soldiers dismembering China, but in Jamaica he finds a surrogate father in Zhang, his father's best friend. Zhang shakes down the Chinatown merchants; Pao becomes his apprentice. He takes to Jamaican street culture like a duck to water, acquiring his own loyal lieutenants, black kids useful as muscle; he cuts his first deal, distributing navy surplus, with a corrupt U.S. sergeant. In 1945, Zhang retires, and 21-year-old Pao becomes the new lord of Chinatown. His smooth ascent distinguishes him from the conventional racketeer who must claw his blood-soaked way to the top. What energizes him as a fictional creation is the voice Young has given him: hip and effervescent. But this Mr. Nice Guy will get his comeuppance in his personal life. Extending his reach beyond Chinatown, Pao offers protection to a brothel and becomes romantically involved with Gloria, its black madam; but when it comes to marriage, he passes over his true love to land a bigger fish: Fay Wong, daughter of a wealthy supermarket owner. The marriage is a disaster. Spoiled, hoity-toity Fay never accepts being married to a hoodlum, and eventually stuns Pao by abducting their two children and stealing away to England. This is the most intense episode among a slew of scandals. White people are almost invariably bad news. There's the British army major who impregnates a 12-year-old Jamaican girl and becomes a major source of hush money. Add to the mix the references to some 40 years of Jamaican politics, and the quotations from Pao's mentor, the military strategist Sun Tzu, and you have a novel that is cluttered but never dull.
Young leads from the heart (her father served as a model for Pao) to celebrate a resilient world that tourists never see. You'll enjoy the view.
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April 1, 2011
This debut novel revolves around a young Chinese boy who migrates with his mother and brother to Jamaica after his father is killed in the Chinese civil war. Following the guidance of his father's friend Zhang and Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Pao rises to become a racketeer and gentle godfather to Kingston's Chinatown. Covering the years from 1938 to 1989, the novel places personal events against the backdrop of Jamaican politics during turbulent times, trying to capture the success of postcolonial historical fiction like Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies or Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. Unfortunately, the integration of private and political feels like window dressing here, and Jamaica only occasionally comes to life. Most of the secondary characters lack dimension, and Pao seems soft for a crime lord. VERDICT The novel works best when it sticks to the melodrama of Pao's extended family--his wife, their parents, his mistress, children by both women, and various underlings--but even these events are somewhat predictable. Recommended only for those fascinated by Sun Tzu, Jamaica, or the lives of Chinese emigrants.--Neil Hollands, Williamsburg Regional Lib., VA
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
May 1, 2011
Set in Kingston, Jamaicas Chinatown, this novel follows its title protagonist from his bewildering arrival in this new place to his rise within it as a gangster and businessman. This diverse, unsung setting is certainly the books most notable feature, but its principal stand-inthe narrators Chinese-Jamaican-accented Englishbecomes as well a source of dullness, having somehow the effect of a monotone. Paos believably un-self-aware, for-the-most-part straightforward account of his life contributes to the enervating lack of rhythm or tension. He plows through the tale, from childhood immigration to retirement, using the rubric of Sun Tzus Art of War to interpret his own and others actions and motivations. What he has to tellillicit exploits, crimes and cover-ups, the subterranean emotional conflicts of being in love with both his mistress and his wife, of being both idealist and criminalis too flamboyant for the book to be completely boring, though. And the integration of a political history of Jamaica adds weight and significance, even if it is not quite seamlessly done.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)