MPH Quill Issue 31, Jul-Sep 2011

Heaps of stories and good stuff coming your way in the latest issue of Quill. New books. Book news. And what is perhaps the longest letter to the editor ever received.

Among the highlights: Eric Forbes talks to Tan Twan Eng, author of The Gift of Rain and Dave Nuku of The Biggest Loser Asia about their favourite books and writers and thoughts on e-books.

Interviews with Tan Twan Eng (left) and Conor Grennan

Janet Tay speaks to Conor Grennan, author of Little Princes, about the life-changing experience that inspired the book and the charity Next Generation Nepal.

Read an excerpt from Chinese Women: Their Malaysian Journey about nyonya brides, maidens and matriarchs. Starting this issue, we'll be featuring excerpts of books we think readers may be interested in.

Features on David TK Wong, author of such books as Chinese Stories in Times of Change and The Embrace of Harlots and Wan A Hulaimi aka Awang Goneng (Growing Up in Trengganu and A Map of Trengganu).

Kenny Mah's nasi kandar memories (left) and Alexandra Wong's
Mysore melancholy

After a soliloquy on sequels, Ellen Whyte takes us on a whirlwind tour of terrific Toledo. Kenny Mah, meanwhile, serves up a sweet tale about his nasi kandar memories.

It's melancholy at Mysore when Alexandra Wong hops into an autorickshaw and gets to know the young fellow behind the handlebars.

...And more!

An additional issue of Quill will be out in conjunction with MPH's 105th anniversary, with more goodies we couldn't fit into this issue.

End Of An Empire?

Less than two years ago, I read a copy of Inside Rupert's Brain by Paul R La Monica. At the time, the News of the World phone-tapping scandal tarred but didn't sink the paper. Even then, Murdoch's empire was fraying around the edges.

What a difference a couple of years makes.

Today, on 10 July 2011, the 168-year-old News of the World publishes its last edition. The phone-tapping scandal turned out to be bigger and deeper than previously thought. In a move many see as baffling, Murdoch spared the head of the editor in charge at the time of the hacks and axed the paper instead. Earlier, MySpace which was bought by News Corp six years ago was sold at a loss of about 94 per cent, from US$580 million to US$35 million.

In the days that followed news of the hack, Fleet Street has been on a big schadenfreude buffet. Murdoch, from the looks of it, is not well-liked by the British press. But it's only a matter of time before all the UK papers will have their journalistic practices looked into. I doubt all this will make a really big impact on News Corp, though nothing seems for certain nowadays.

But back to the book.

What I found freaked me out a little. This guy certainly knew his business, and it looked like he had a way to make the Internet work for him. I found the size and reach News Corp had really scary. About half the world consumes what News Corp and its various components offer, and it seems that isn't enough for the old fox.

This book managed to convey just enough to give readers a brief look into his thinking, what drives him, and some background into what could be considered the milestones in his long career. Any deeper and you might have to speak to the man himself. Not that it matters to the casual reader.

Wonder what kind of books will come out about News Corp after this?

Along with other pieces I've done, this review brings back memories. The job at Off The Edge had its moments, including books such as this one. I'm not sure if I can deal with the stress, though.

---

I, Rupert

Inside the mind of an old-school newsman

first published in Off The Edge, December 2009 (Issue 60)


In a rather patronising radio address published in the Herald Sun’s web site last year (2008), Rupert Murdoch appeared to chide rival newspapers for writing their obituaries upon seeing the coming digital wave, rather than using it to their readers’ benefit as well as their own. "Give these readers good honest reporting on issues that mattered most to them. In return, you would be rewarded with trust and loyalty you could take to the bank."

Another thing he intends to take to the bank is money. Since this address the Australian-born media baron has gone on a roadshow of sorts, trumpeting the end of free news on the web as newspapers and magazines start folding worldwide. Quality journalism, he insists, is not cheap, and adds that today's readers are willing to part with a few more dollars for real, quality news.

It echoes of the McTaggart Lecture Murdoch gave at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in 1989, where he foretold TV’s digital (and paid) future, and lambasted British broadcasters’ protectionist policies. On the same stage twenty years later, his son James blasted UK media industry regulator Ofcom for what he believes is its complicity in the BBC’s "chilling" ambition to grow its footprint. It should be noted that Murdoch’s BSkyB (formerly Sky TV) has become the UK’s dominant pay-TV service, whose grip on the market is being probed by... Ofcom.

Thanks in part to his successes, and the reputed political clout of his media outlets, Keith Rupert Murdoch is hard to ignore. From just a single newspaper, the now-defunct Adelaide News, his News Corporation now includes movie studio 20th Century Fox, broadcasting company Fox, Asian satellite TV provider Star TV, web sites MySpace and Photobucket, book publisher HarperCollins, and of course, newspapers in Australia, the UK and US.

To many, this old-school newspaper man seems prescient when it comes to some media trends (as it was with multi-channelled, satellite pay-TV). What’s under the hood? Paul R La Monica, "editor at large" of CNNMoney.com, wrote Inside Rupert’s Head to find out. Quite a bit of research has gone into the book, written in a way that appears to only interest those who really want to look inside the media mogul’s head.

At first glance the book is a somewhat biographical account that highlights certain chapters in Murdoch’s career, which include the expansion of the newspaper business in Australia to the UK and US; the news channel battle between Fox and CNN; his forays into satellite and cable TV, and the Internet; and his bid for Dow Jones and Co, owner of the Wall Street Journal and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In between the author inserts observations by himself and others about Murdoch during those times. The resulting picture of is that of an industry pioneer and maverick who still feels he has something to prove.

Given the bad news coming out of News Corp of late, he might. The company recorded a US$3.4 billion net loss for the latest financial year. Murdoch’s British newspapers’ year-end ad revenue dropped by 14 percent. Profits across News Corp’s global newspaper division fell from US$786 million to US$466 million. His News of the World was involved in a phone-tapping scandal. To top it off, his net worth dropped from over US$8 billion last year to US$4 billion, according to Forbes. Dow Jones wants to sell its iconic stock index business. Now comes what is seen as his war on Google.

While the senior Murdoch's call for paid news makes some sense, the timing is somewhat suspect, what with all the above. Even if subscribers passed more bucks to keep the media honest, how much of an improvement would it make on the business practices of this monolith of a media corporation? One supposes time will tell, as it did with satellite TV.

It is likely this old-school media mogul’s empire will continue to make the news even as it dishes them out. From James Murdoch’s McTaggart lecture this year, it won’t be too long before there’s enough interest in finding out if James Murdoch is a chip off the old block.

---

Inside Rupert's Brain

Paul R La Monica
Portfolio (2009)
272 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-1591842439

Portuguese Pleasures

Written weeks ago, this review of popular, well-reviewed Cristang Restaurant is finally out in the papers. On the day of the Big Yellow Rally. What timing.

However, I feel I have to clarify and point out a few things which were in the original copy: The chef's name is Gerald G (as in Gordon) Oei, not C; the "devils on horseback" dish is described twice; a "noodle incident" about "crossed wires" should've been removed, but wasn't; and technically, the Cristang aren't exactly Portuguese but I was groping for words for a little article alliteration.

---

Portuguese pleasures

It’s a different kind of foreign occupation when memories of the food at Cristang Restaurant can’t get out of these diners’ heads

first published in The Star, 09 July 2011


We arrived at the restaurant at 8 Avenue around dusk. As Alex whipped out her camera to photograph the exterior, she pointed at something. "Look," she exclaimed, "there are pigs above the doorway!"

As I examined the pigs, a Cristang-looking fellow appeared at the door. "It’s the first time anybody noticed the ‘guardians’ since I opened," he observed. Alex can be sharp-eyed when she wants to be.

We take in the décor: chairs with chequered cushions, wood panelling around the front doorway, and glass panels with the current specials written in dry-erase ink. Sitting in front of each fake brocade cushion was a half-filled pig head-shaped bean bag. The atmosphere was quite subdued, with Portuguese/Latin American guitar playing over the sound system. At the time we were there, we were the only patrons.

Chef-owner Gerald C. Oei told us that Cristang has been open for two years.

"Our opening hours are on Facebook, and behind the counter. I don’t open on Mondays," he said, adding that there were exceptions. "If Tuesday is a public holiday, I will open on Monday."

Though named for the descendants of the Portuguese who dropped by in the 16th century, Cristang’s restaurant’s menu also has Italian, Spanish and other influences from continental Europe: pastas and protein-starch-veggie dishes. It seems as though the restaurant is still trying to figure out what it wants to be. Or perhaps it’s a reflection of the owner’s eclectic tastes and repertoire.

In a radio interview, Gerald seemed to suggest that Cristang was the lab/playground to test and try out his culinary experiments, his own takes on his grandma’s recipes. He was almost vibrating with glee as he told a customer about a dessert he was trying out.

"I love what I do," he beamed.

Alex avoided the carbonara despite the promise of crispy, smoky porcine pleasure in the ingredients list. She settled on a "basic" pork burger, a Cristang signature that had a number of different "grades" from P1 to P10. I picked a tapas dubbed "devils on horseback" - bacon-wrapped sticks of asparagus, baked in a sauce of garlic, onions and red wine. The menu whimsically noted that for this item, "Sorry, angels are not available."

Similar displays of humour were in the menu, lost in the anticipation of a splendid meal.

Alex didn’t like the "devils on horseback" much, mainly because the bacon wasn’t crispy. The dish - three asparagus spears wrapped in bacon and swimming in a garlic and red wine sauce, was likely baked. It was delicious, a great appetiser.

Alex found Cristang’s pork burger much finer than another establishment’s. It was nice and juicy, and the tiny potato wedges were roasted with rosemary. Definitely a higher class pork burger. The full-on version, which had petai (stinkbean) mixed into the patties only got better with the addition of cheese, chilli con carne, and other add-ons, all of which made for a pretty dish one would feel reluctant to cut into.

My Avenue Fried Rice was a decidedly upmarket, larger and tastier version of a mamak stall nasi goreng kambing. A lamb curry fried rice with crunchy fried anchovies and slivers of cucumber, it was, to my dismay, mild – but tasty.

I was surprised, however, by how bitter my D’Tox Red fruit juice combo was. Wasn’t a mix of watermelon, orange and carrot supposed to be kind of sweet? I also wondered why they served water in a tequila glass until I took a sip and got a mouthful of sucrose syrup instead.

Oh yes... didn’t the waiter say, "Sugar is separate"?

Almost full, we toyed with the idea of dessert. The Apple Strudel looked nice, but Alex was worried about the sugar content. Nor did she find the fried banana dessert appealing. We eventually settled for something different, a Butter Cake Anglaise: five pieces of fried butter cake with cream Anglaise, strawberry purée, arranged around a scoop of vanilla ice-cream garnished with a mint on top.

The notion of a fried butter cake drove Alex into mental overdrive, even before she’d had a taste. Oh, it was so good. Sinful decadence on a plate. It helped that the butter cake was already good, but when you pan-sear the outside to crisp it, then drizzle strawberry purée over it and eat it with a bit of good cold vanilla ice-cream...

Alex’s mind was, to my imagination, afire with visions of animated slices of butter cake, falling into and leaping from their frying pans, complete with yelps of pain.

Despite being stuffed, we kept stealing morsel after morsel, and in no time the plate was clean, we were happy, and the tension caused by our crossed wires vanished. It was money well spent.

I popped RM1 plus change into a tip jar that rather brazenly suggested, "Afraid of change? Leave it here!"

Memories of the food, particularly dessert, continued to haunt us as we drove home.

"Oh God, the cake was so sinful," Alex groaned. I couldn’t tell whether she was grumbling or gushing. Our minds would be aflame with visions of butter cake, petai-infused pork burgers and rosemary-tinged potato wedges for the next couple of weeks.

Talk about a different kind of Portuguese invasion.

---

Cristang Restaurant

Unit B-G-19, 8 Avenue
Jalan Sungai Jernih (8/1)
46050 Petaling Jaya
Selangor

CLOSED FOR GOOD

Secret Service

I had originally intended to blog the review of this book I got from Monsoon. Then, when visiting the editorial staff at the paper, I opened my big mouth.

But perhaps it's better I did. As an account of the days before and after the Japanese occupation of Malaya, this book is a slice of history. While I don't know how much of a difference the review will make, I felt the paper was a better platform to tell people about this book.

My standfirst in the original copy was not used, so I've included it here; it does sound quite cliché in hindsight. But why does the print and online version have different titles?

---

Secret service

The memoirs of a British intelligence officer in Malaya surfaces to entertain, enlighten and enthral

first published in The Star, 08 July 2011


Malayan Spymaster: Memoirs Of A Rubber Planter, Bandit Fighter and Spy is the abridged version of the memoirs of the late Boris Hembry (1910-1990) who, according to the back cover blurb, "... spent a month in the jungle behind enemy lines ... recruited into the Secret Intelligence Service ... returned to Sumatra and Malaya several times by submarine ... liaised with Force 136 ..."

Who would not want to know more?

Born in South Africa, Boris Messina Hembry was barely 20 when he arrived on these shores in 1930. He bounced around several rubber estates in Malaya and Sumatra, and also joined the local volunteer corps. He brought his wife over from Britain and started a family.

When the Japanese invaded during World War II, Hembry joined one of the volunteer corps' many stay-behind parties – his first and failed foray into espionage – before eventually escaping to India. He soon demonstrated a knack for getting into trouble when he signed up for intelligence work in Burma, forsaking the relative safety and calm of a training battalion.

He would later join spying operations in Japanese-occupied Malaya, a job that had him travelling by submarine and taking a short course at Britain's famous Government Code and Cypher School in Bletchley Park, where the Nazis' Enigma code was cracked.

Hours after the murder of estate manager Arthur Walker (that eventually triggered the declaration of the Malayan Emergency and the fight against communist insurgents), Hembry organised his "own bloody army" of volunteers to repel the Reds – the beginnings of the anti-Communist home guard.

His contribution to the fight against the insurgents included input that would later be incorporated into the Briggs Plan that resettled rural folk into New Villages to cut off support for the communists. Social highlights included interactions with Sir Henry Gurney, Sir Gerald Templer and Anthony Eden, who would become British prime minister. Hembry left Malaya in 1955 with his wife, partly due to poor health.

With a title like Malayan Spymaster one expects a cool book. The writing, however, is quite matter-of-fact, devoid of the usual fluff and literary devices. His life as a planter, soldier and estate manager is more detailed than chapters that concern his time as an intelligence officer.

Even if this isn't quite the knuckle-whitening, real-life spy thriller the title suggests, Hembry's simple storytelling, charming in its own unadorned way, is compensated by a wealth of information and experiences gleaned the hard way. The reader is immersed in life in the clubs and estates of the British colonial era, as well as the dangers of the jungles and swamps during war-time.

'Tis heady stuff, this record of the days in pre-war and post-war Malaya by this Mat Salleh, one of many who spent much of their life's efforts on their adopted country and who may never be acknowledged in the history books.

Hembry never intended to publish his memoirs. His kin, however, felt that it deserved a much wider readership.

"We dedicate it to those expatriates of many generations whose devotion to that beautiful country and its peoples helped to lay the foundations of present-day peaceful and prosperous Malaysia," says Hembry's son, John, in the preface.

I'm certain readers of Malayan Spymaster will be grateful for the Hembrys' generosity.

---

Malayan Spymaster

Memoirs of a Rubber Planter, Bandit Fighter and Spy

Boris Hembry
Monsoon Books (2011)
424 pages
Non-Fiction/History/Malayan Emergency
ISBN: 978-981-08-5442-3

Born To Run

Timothy Malcolm Smith is creative whiz at London ad agency Cream. He's friendly, charitable, deeply spiritual, philosophical, good with the ladies, and keeps virtually no vices. He doesn't pray to Christ, he chats with Him, calling him "Jezza" or "Jez". Did I mention he's also his ad agency's creative genius?

There's this British coffee franchise, Common Grounds, which is older than penicillin, tea bags, even sliced bread. But the brand has gone stale. With his capable and charming assistant Cambria, Timmy swoops in with a plan and a slogan: "Common Grounds - Everybody's Cup of Tea". The campaign is paradigm-changing. The video ad goes viral. Common Grounds is rescued. One can almost visualise the headlines blaring, "Cream Saves Coffee".

More ad campaigns follow, including a poem for a charity organisation's ad that blows everyone away. Rival agencies come a-courting, including New York creative powerhouse Oddinary. But for the time being, he stays put.

And there's this other dream of his: training in secret since his childhood, Timmy wants to run and win the New York Marathon, taking the entire race by surprise as a dark horse of a champion. No small feat, considering that it means defeating the Ethiopian long-distance running champion, Haile Gebrselassie.

Oh, did I mention that Timmy's rich? Or his Balinese-style, 4-bedroom pad called Ankhura, atop a 18-floor luxury apartment building on the edge of London's Canary Wharf, with its own garden and fish-filled rock pools, and a sound system that plays ambient sounds of nature: forests, seaside, rivers and so on - which he designed himself? And the "elephantine mahogany bed", larger than king-size, with sheets of 1500-threadcount Egyptian cotton?

...I put down the book. If I could crook one eyebrow, I would. Can such a Mary Sue - whose ads everyone wants to copy, whose artistry can bend the fabric of reality so that Brits would start switching from tea to coffee - possibly exist? It is fiction, but still...

Character, charisma, career, creative chops, cojones, and cash. Timothy Malcolm Smith has it all. Then I read on, and find out that even as Superman has his kryptonite, the protagonist of Jeremy Chin's début novel has some flaws. For one, Timothy Malcolm Smith is unlucky in love. Funnily, "Jezza" is a nickname for people called Jeremy or Jerry.

...All that was the first 60-odd pages of Fuel, a dark horse of a Malaysian-authored novel if I ever saw one. Even before we enter the home of Timmy Smith, it passed the 50-page test with soaring colours.

What follows is perhaps among the most beautiful love stories ever told. Timmy would share his marathon dreams with Cambria, whom he eventually grows close to. They would train together, go to New York and exchange pleasantries with Gebrselassie. And they would, as the novel promises, do the unexpected. What drives Timmy - the "fuel" for his creativity and his dreams - is passion. Hence, the title.

Despite the reality-warping powers of Timmy Smith's creativity and charm, the initial contact, courtship and the clincher is well-scripted and believable, albeit a little rainbow-hued. If the atmosphere of a creative agency feels too true-to-life, it's because Chin himself worked in a similar industry in London for a number of years, and has brought his experience to bear in this book.

But it's not just the cover's simple but impactful design. Every phrase, every paragraph has purpose, is strung together well and polished to a showroom sheen. Timmy's big empty mahogany bed practically screams, "Lonely heart, space available, enquire within." No need to guess what the 1500-threadcount Egyptian cotton sheets imply.

The only minor bumps in Timmy's racetrack to glory are the first-person narratives and the prologue featuring lionesses hunting a gazelle. But wait a minute - isn't Gebrselassie's native Ethiopia home to a number of national parks?

That's why I feel the inclusion of Gebrselassie adds a touch of realism to the tale. Even before the conclusion of Fuel, you're already cheering for Timmy and Cambria. You'll want to believe that someone like Timmy can actually exist, that Timmy and Cambria's love story can be real, that Timmy can win, that he can actually move mountains. That you can move mountains, and the fairy-tale Timmy-Cambria romance can be yours.

Yichalal, as they say in Ethiopia's Amharic language. "It is possible". "It can be done." Especially when the word was associated with Gebrselassie’s fierce determination to run and win gold in the 10,000 metres at the 2000 Sydney Olympics despite an injury.

If there is one book you should read this year, or next year, or the year after that, it'll be this book.

---

Fuel

Jeremy Chin
255 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-967-10084-0-9

Web site: fueldabook.com

Booty

...or how my reading list is getting longer.

I picked up three books by Singaporean Eurasian novelist Rex Shelley (1930-2009) that have been reissued by Marshall Cavendish: People of the Pear Tree (1993), Island in the Centre (1995) and A River of Roses (1998), I'd also rescued several other books from non-review obscurity - because I'm kind of biblio-masochistic that way.

Books "rescued" on impulse (left) and the Rex Shelley "collection"

Now I also have John Boyne's The Absolutist, followed by Catherine Lim's Miss Seetoh in the World and Those in Peril by "airport novel writer" Wilbur Smith.

Now, let's see:

• The Absolutist
  John Boyne
  Doubleday (2011)
  309 pages
  Fiction
  ISBN: 978-0-385-61605-8
• Miss Seetoh in the World
  Catherine Lim
  Marshall Cavendish Editions (2011)
  487 pages
  Fiction
  ISBN: 978-981-4328-36-4
• Those in Peril
  Wilbur Smith
  MacMillan (2011)
  386 pages
  Fiction
  ISBN: 978-0-230-52927-4
• People of the Pear Tree
  Rex Shelley
  Marshall Cavendish Editions (2011)
  270 pages
  Fiction
  ISBN: 978-981-4346-24-5
• Island in the Centre
  Rex Shelley
  Marshall Cavendish Editions (2011)
  271 pages
  Fiction
  ISBN: 978-981-4346-25-2
• River of Roses
  Rex Shelley
  Marshall Cavendish Editions (2011)
  471 pages
  Fiction
  ISBN: 978-981-4346-26-9

...Whoa. Glad I've finished reading The Absolutist and drafted the review. One down, five-plus more to go!

The Writing Room Gets Crowded

Unbound, a new crowd-funded publishing company that gets readers involved the writing of books, was unveiled at this year's Hay Festival, the an annual literature festival held in Hay-on-Wye, the famous town of books in the Welsh county of Powys.

Unbound, the new face of crowd-funded
publishing

On the web site, each author's page has an extract from their book and a video pitch of their book idea. People who like what they see can pledge a certain amount to fund the book, from £10 to £250, with goodies that commensurate with the pledged amount. Pledgers will have their names printed in the final version of the book.

Half the profits on successful titles go to the author. If a book fails to launch, pledges can be transferred to other titles, or be refunded.

So why should people participate? Because, according to Unbound, "For the first time, you will be able to hold in your hands a book that wouldn't have existed without you."

"We are really trying to involve the readers at an earlier stage of the process which could be transformative as authors will have better visibility of how their ideas are being received by their target audience as they write," explained John Mitchinson, one of the company's founders, in the Guardian. The others are British historian, television producer and writer Justin Pollard, and author and editor, Dan Kieran.

Several authors have signed on to Unbound, including best-selling authors Terry Jones, Booker-shortlisted novelist Tibor Fischer and cloudspotter Gavin Pretor-Pinney.

In the fading, cash-strapped world of book publishing, crowd-funding can be one way out of oblivion. But will any kind of book be successfully Unbound?

Crowd-funding, I feel, works best for works of non-fiction, particularly coffee table books and directories for people and places of interest: historical sites, hidden foodie haunts, unique communities, and such. Nothing galvanises the public more than a worthy cause, and they can contribute more than just money. From this simplistic point of view, I don't think the initiative is all that novel.

One of the founders appears to concur. "In many ways it's a very old idea – there are a lot of 19th century cases where books were published by subscription," said Justin Pollard. "Because of the internet we have crowdfunding, so we can combine the old idea of subscription with finding your audience on the internet, and get the best of both worlds."

Perhaps. After all, books aren't solo endeavours; historical novels, for instance, require research, which volunteers can pitch in with.

Thing is, I'm less sure about crowd-funding working for fiction.

With regards to the novel as an art form, however, crowd-sourcing can be burdensome. Imagine Leonardo da Vinci's patrons - the highest-paying ones - being granted the privilege of sitting around the artist and providing input as he paints the Mona Lisa.

"The nose needs to be sharper."

"No, a finer bridge."

"CLEAVAGE!"

"Why is the backdrop so dull? The Florentine cityscape would look nicer."

"Why not her room?"

"Don't want people to know where the apartment is located."

"Point."

"CLEAVAGE!"

"Her forehead's too damn high."

"G*d she looks like a man. Longer eyelashes?"

"Redder, shinier lips, maybe."

"More colourful robes."

"MORE CLEAVAGE!"

"Like he said."

"Yes, that'll work."

Leo would probably snap his paintbrush in two and stalk off after a few days of input.

Regardless of the amount, there is little to deter patrons from going overboard with their ideas. The author, meanwhile, will inevitably feel swamped by all the contributions, wondering perhaps if he'll offend certain patrons (such as the high-paying ones) by rejecting their ideas. Then there's the question of money compromising artistic vision... .

I'm certain some authors would not welcome such complications to their creative processes.

Still, it's not a bad idea, and G*d knows the publishing industry is gasping for fresh ideas, a lifeline out of oblivion brought on by the digital age. Perhaps Unbound can be another launchpad for the careers of new authors, and a new arena the established ones can explore or play in.

Some members of the latter category sound enthusiastic. Jones reportedly said the "brilliant" crowd-funding idea was "just what publishing needs". Philip Pullman and Noam Chomsky are similarly enthusiastic.

Such a web portal can also help bridge the gap between authors and their supporters and the public - kind of like JK Rowling's Pottermore. The buzz surrounding an upcoming project can whip up a degree of interest in it, ensuring a ready market for new products.

Chick-lit author Amy Jenkins, another Unbound participant, is particularly excited by the notion of being surrounded by supporters ("Writing is a really lonely occupation", she reportedly stated) and not having to do much marketing.

So I suppose, yes, this startup might be worth keeping an eye on.

"The hero needs to be blonde."

"Why did you kill him off here? Do it earlier."

"Later."

"SEX!"

"This scene needs to be longer."

"Shorter."

"China in 1891 is still under the Qing Dynasty."

"SEX!"

"There are no piranhas in Africa."

"They're imported."

"Dude, this is fiction. Lighten up."

"LOTS OF STEAMY, SWEATY SEX!"

"Like he said."

"Yes, that'll work."

...Along with the myriad challenges it poses.

Paper People

I decided to get Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists at the advertised 20 per cent discount. The sales assistant mentioned a "coupon", but turns out all I had to do was to surrender that section of the newspaper in exchange for the price cut.

At a discounted price of RM48 it was still expensive, never mind the "bonus" interview featuring Rachman and Malcolm Gladwell and accolades such as the New York Times Book Review of the Year.

At least the book didn't disappoint.

Formerly a journalist with Associated Press, Tom Rachman was born in 1974 in London, but grew up in Vancouver. The Imperfectionists is his début novel; he's now in London, working on his second.

Tom Rachman's newspaper novel

This novel charts the fall of a fictional newspaper headquartered in Rome, through the vignettes of key characters involved with it. Each chapter is dedicated to one character, complete with a headline. Spliced in between are the milestones in the paper's history, rendered in eye-gouging italics.

Among others, we meet an obituary writer and trivia section custodian, who struggles with his editor and later, a family tragedy; the grizzled corrections editor who can't seem to keep up with the Internet-powered changes in his world of words; a frumpy, bitchy, bitter copywriter who has a love/hate relationship with her career; and a news editor/aspiring inventor who tries to deal with his girlfriend's cheating.

Rounding up the cast is the struggling, starving freelancer who's miles away from it all, and is therefore, clueless about how the news mill he writes for is run; the equally clueless descendant of the paper's founder; and one who is perhaps the paper's most loyal reader.

Despite my very brief stint in journalism, and even though the setting and ethnicity is different, I can still recognise bits of former colleagues in the characters. In myself are fragments of struggling freelancer Lloyd Burko and obsessive-compulsive corrections editor Herman Cohen. As for the premise itself - well, it's one that's playing out everywhere.

The format may look odd, breaking the story up and interrupting the momentum, but thanks to sharp, witty prose and an innate knowledge of the industry, this 200-plus-page obituary to newsprint that Rachman has written is one fun, morbid ride. The character's individual stories, though interesting and funny, are somewhat peripheral to the world crumbling around them.

In The Imperfectionists one can truly see the physical newspaper's slow, painful spiral to oblivion. Despite knowing what's to come, the pages keep turning. Writers/journalists/publishers of every stripe will find the depressing tone of the book strangely comforting in its familiarity.

Hence my bafflement at this book being marketed as fiction. It's as real as it can one wants it to be.

They could have done without the Rachman-Gladwell section. Omitting that would probably cut the price by 30 per cent.

---

The Imperfectionists

Tom Rachman
Dial Press (2011)
281 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-385-34367-1

"Eet Ees NOT Too SOHLTEE!"

A long, long time ago in a Visa Card ad with a restaurant setting, Zhang Ziyi infuriated a chef with the complaint, "De sup is too saltee." The pissed-off chef yells his denial and set his kitchen staff on her. A re-enactment of the restaurant fight scene in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ensued. Though the place was trashed, Zhang emerged triumphant and hurled a Visa Card to a waiter - "for the 'extras'".

In 2008, at a restaurant in Taiwan, a similar tableau unfolded but this time the chef - or rather, the restaurant - won.

A food and lifestyle blogger who visited the restaurant not only complained about salty food, but also of cockroaches in the kitchen and the owner who allowed indiscriminate parking near his premises. When the owner heard about the review, he sued her for defamation.

The judge ruled in the restaurant's favour on the grounds that the blogger had gone too far with her review. She was sentenced to 30 days in jail and ordered to pay the restaurant about US$7,000 for losses her review may have caused.

This sounds... kind of familiar... except that nothing about that fishy case has come up so far.

I have not read the review, but I feel the judgement handed down was a bit heavy-handed. Making sweeping statements about the food based on one dish is reckless (unless it's the only dish served by the establishment), though I feel the roach part is valid. It was just one review by one person; other diners may beg to differ.

So can a food blog, a chronological journal of one's eating experiences with anecdotes of bad food and bad hygiene for a particular day, be defamatory? Is it unfair and unobjective to say something tastes "bad" when it, well, tastes "bad"? Tastebuds generally don't lie.

Things change all the time in restaurants, and unfortunately for that blogger, that day was perhaps a bad time to visit. Things might have happened afterwards: a visit from a healthy inspector, another customer complaint... the problems that were blogged about may have been solved after the review was published - something a review should include.

Commenting on the case, a Taiwanese lawyer said food bloggers should be "truthful in their commentary", "be fair and objective in their writing", and use photographic evidence to protect themselves. In short, they should be like journalists. But are food bloggers supposed to be journalists? Or will journalism be expected from bloggers in the future, particularly those whose blogs have high page hits?

Will being like journalists actually help protect bloggers from defamation suits?

One way this could have been avoided was not to review the place at all. With the exception of one or two blogs I know of, Malaysian food bloggers don't bother if an overall restaurant experience is sour. But what if a review was paid for, or by invitation? Does one gloss over the flaws, write a "balanced" review, or what?

In the near future, however, I think they'd better be careful when reviewing eating places in Taiwan.

France Made Fun

I had expected this to be out on in the Sunday Star's ReadsMonthly, not today. I wonder what will that section feature?

Not much else I have to say about this review, other than it took me 2½ days to finish. With this, Stephen Clarke and Dan Simmons are now the authors whose works I've reviewed the most. Not sure if that's a good thing... .

---

France made fun

Sample these sharp and humorous takes on all things French sparingly

first published in The Star, 24 June 2011


Stephen Clarke is funny, which is to be expected of a writer who cut his teeth writing comedy sketches for the BBC. After moving to France, he turned his incisive wit on his adopted homeland, resulting in a series of novels and several non-fiction books that are mostly about the pleasures and perils of living in that country.

Talk to the Snail was how I got to know Clarke ("French comprehension", Reads, StarMag, Dec 30, 2007). His handy, hilarious survival guide to France was chock-full of myth-busting anecdotes. "... if you want to know France, don't ask a Frenchman. He'll only give you the version he wants you to hear," says Clarke. "He won't mention that French women have just about the highest Prozac consumption in the world.... Or that the French are mad about hamburgers...."

Stephen Clarke's 1000 Years of Annoying the French (left) and
Paris Revealed - more of the French than you can handle

That book didn't shock, but it left me quite breathless by making me laugh my lungs flat. It's just that all these hidden, surreal sides of France are so over the top, they look more natural and less funny in fiction – I decided that I find Clarke funnier when he's not writing fiction. So when I came across a 2010 non-fiction release I hadn't seen, as well as a title released earlier this year, I couldn't resist asking to review both.

1000 Years Of Annoying The French, which sounds like Clarke's job description, is a brick-like tome that tries to "set the record straight" about the long tragicomedy that is the French-English relationship. A healthy portion of it, however, appears dedicated to what Clarke does best, which he suggests is nothing new. From William the Conqueror to the diplomatic gaffes suffered by current French president Nicolas Sarkozy, all forms of insults have been flying between Britain and France for centuries. Kind of like Malaysia-Singapore, only much longer.

From 1000 Years, it seems the French may have exaggerated notions of their place in history. In his own inimitable way, Clarke mercilessly tears down each "historical fact" and uncovers some surprising things:

• Clarke says that William the Conqueror was not a French king because he was of Viking descent, drank little wine, and was faithful to his wife.
• Mary, Queen of Scots, had French blood and upbringing. As Clarke states, "She was as Scottish as foie gras-flavoured haggis."
• The fearsome guillotine used to dispatch various French royals and nobles during the French Revolution was a British invention.
• France's exorbitant demands for war-time reparations from Germany after World War I might have bred the resentment that would later fuel Hitler's rise and start World War II.

Here, Clarke shows his work as an acerbic, wittier, and less genteel David Attenborough of the history of Anglo-French relations. Each sequence of events is threaded together well, with references to previous chapters and modern events, plus accompanying footnotes to make the history more interesting, entertaining even.

Case in point: The English may have killed Joan of Arc (see chapter four), but it seems that France allowed them to. Centuries later, after World War I, France had her made a saint (see chapter 24). Clarke notes the irony. "Yes, just eighteen months after Britain had sacrificed a whole generation of its young men to defend Joan of Arc's homeland against invasion, the French adopted an anti-English patron saint." Merci beaucoup, les amis (thanks a lot, buddy), indeed.

This history book with a difference was every bit the enjoyable read it promised to be. I can't say quite as much about the other book. Returning to the present day and familiar territory, Clarke zooms in on his home city. Paris Revealed: The Secret Life Of A City is essentially Talk to the Snail Lite, focusing specifically on the "secrets" of the city. Clarke lays bare the mysteries behind the some Parisian eccentricities: the signage, the people, the architecture ... the works.

Treasures in this box includes a map and brief descriptions of Paris's 20 arrondissements (administrative districts); survival tips, such as how to become a Parisian and how not to annoy other Parisians; and addresses of cafés, restaurants, museums and other places of interest. Choice bits and helpful information about the "city of lovers" are divided into helpful sections: Parisians, Pavements, Water, History, Romance, Fashion, and so on.

Though it veers towards TMI territory, it isn't Clarke's intention to scare people away from Paris. He hopes the book will complete the "glitzy, romanticised" image of the city that often graces travel brochures, making her personality more real and fully rounded. "After all, you don't truly fall in love with someone until you know what makes them tick." Well put.

Even so, Paris Revealed is pretty lightweight reading, compared to 1000 Years. Though a good mix of fact and fun, it has little of the zing that Talk to the Snail has. By the time I was halfway through, Clarke-fatigue had set in. The writing started appearing dry and a little self-indulgent. The jokes get old rather quickly, and the use of French phrases in punch lines soon becomes a bad idea, especially if the reader doesn't know the language. Do I smell an author's impending burnout?

I hope not. Few can write like Clarke, and it would be a pity were he to keel over after flogging the old French nag for so long. Every book in his repertoire so far revolves around taking the mickey out of France – which the French themselves have begun doing, as recent headlines suggest. Perhaps a new source of inspiration is in order. Italy, maybe?

In spite of it all, Clarke remains a must-read on my shelf, and I'd recommend (some of) his books to anyone who's interested. It's just that his stuff is like foie gras: rich, and should only be consumed on occasion – preferably in small, manageable portions.

---

1000 Years of Annoying the French

Stephen Clarke
Black Swan (2010)
686 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-0-552-77575-5

Paris Revealed

The Secret Life of a City

Stephen Clarke
Bantam Press (2011)
306 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-0-593-06711-6

One Sick Fish

When I was with Off The Edge, we received mail from a reader who noted the little "Consumer Price Index" slot we gave to Hotel Nikko, advertising its Chinese restaurant's Superior Shark's Fin with Golden Broth and Gold Foil (OTE, Jan 2009).

He went on to express "surprise" that "one of the more enlightened publications in Malaysia" would promote, from the vibes I got, something so decadent and environmentally damaging as sharks fin soup. Shock! Horror!

So he suggested that perhaps we should've added a disclaimer of some kind, which he helpfully provided. The chief felt he had a point, so he published the "disclaimer" in full in the next issue.

Eating shark-fin soup seriously threatens the survival of sharks. More than one hundred million sharks are killed each year ... The irony is while the shark-fin itself is tasteless ... it actually contains a high concentration of toxic mercury (causes nervous system deterioration, male infertility) since [the shark] is the apex predator in the sea and accumulates all the mercury from the fishes in consumes during its long life. Have a healthy Chinese New Year.

I had different thoughts.

The reader might have done his homework and meant well, but to me he was a complete tyro. The point was to promote the dish, and tacking his kind of "disclaimer" to the slot would be the equivalent of "save the sharks, shut down some restaurants". The "male infertility" thing was definitely pinpoint targeting. Tact, dude.

And did he really feel people who'd buy OTE would be so woefully uninformed about shark's fin? As a sometimes-reader myself, I'd be offended - and I was. And still am.

Given the choice, I wouldn't order it. It's expensive, wasteful (if it came from finning) and the fin fibres themselves have as much nutrition as your hair or fingernails. But when a bowl of Jaws' flipper-fibres is put in front of me, I'm very likely to eat it. Because by the time the shark goes into the bowl, it is already too late.

I like sharks. It is one sick fish. While the raptors were busy growing the parts that would help them fly, sharks were already masters of their realm. Around this time was the reign of a personal favourite: carcharocles megalodon, the bus-sized, whale-eating terror of the deep.

The shark evolved to effectively hunt and kill slow, weak and stupid marine life, so that only the strong remain and make stronger, smarter offspring - kind of like what Simon, Randy, et al do on American Idol. On lean days, their keen senses are used to look for dead or dying prey species and eat that, keeping the seas relatively clean and sanitised.

However, as Reader so helpfully pointed out, in this day and age countless numbers of sharks across the spectrum of species are killed each year. And as apex predators of the deep, they accumulate all sorts of toxic substances in their bodies as they hunt and eat inside increasingly polluted oceans, much like whales.

Though it's been established that many species such as the great white mature slowly and rarely reproduce, science still knows so little about the shark's life cycles. The scale of the slaughter is such that the impact of one dead shark can send big ripples across an ecosystem.

And if we do wipe out the sharks, are we willing to take their place in the ecosystem, hunting and cleaning up the oceans of dead, rotting whales and such?

But it didn't used to be like this. Or was it, except on a smaller, more sustainable scale?

Which is why I'm interested in what this book has to say about sharks and our relationships with them. They could have done away with the simulated gill slits on the cover, though. And did they have to call it Demon Fish?

In this book, the author Juliet Eilperin goes round the world to investigate how different individuals and cultures relate to the shark, one of nature's most awesome creatures. Eilperin is the national environmental reporter for The Washington Post, where she writes about science, policy, and politics in areas ranging from climate change to oceans.

Ah, that's one sick book. Too bad it comes with a sick price tag. The paperback can't come soon enough.

Man On The Fringe

In my brief stint at Off The Edge magazine, I'd had the privilege of interviewing and writing about people I'd never thought I meet and proofing the articles of some really high-powered personalities. The job had its moments but I only ever got to meet a handful of these people in person.

The first time I saw Benjamin McKay was at the first Seksualiti Merdeka, in 2008. He was in a panel that included Sharon Bong and an MP, and he was presenting a paper on public spaces and the "cruising habits of the Malaysian male." Which, he constantly reminded his audience, was done with no funding. He was a Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the School of Arts and Social Sciences, Monash University's Sunway Campus and, I heard, knew his stuff well.

I never got to know him other than through the articles I checked, and even then, gave them a perfunctory glance for any glaring typos and whatnot. From what I would hear much later, all the copies I'd received had been substantially cleaned up beforehand.

His passing came as a shock to everyone. Back then, chances of McKay's name on a list of "people who might die tomorrow" were very, very remote.

Off The Edge folded around the same time he passed on. I barely got to know the magazine before it went, too.

My time with both McKay's articles and OTE was brief, and I did wonder if that was enough to "allow" me to attend the event that also commemorated his brief time with us. But went I did.

Fringe Benefits: Essays and Reflections on Malaysian Arts and Cinema was launched on 19 June at The Annexe, Central Market, and it was attended by several of his students, colleagues, friends and acquaintances. The book is a compilation of selected film-related articles he wrote for online Malaysian arts portal Kakiseni and Off The Edge.

The phrase "fringe benefits" had a significance. According to McKay's former colleague Yeoh Seng Guan, the fringes of a society was where interaction with the outside world was and where all the creative energies were - the edges of the box one should think out of, so to speak. So the "benefits" from the fringe are new ideas, radical ways of thinking that can enlighten and transform a society. Perhaps an allusion to a quest to bring these benefits from the fringe to the "centre" - the mainstream society.

Another thing that was mentioned was that McKay's office was located on the fringes of the campus as well. That made his fronting the "Fringe Benefits" column doubly apt.

I'm intellectually lazy, so I'll only tell you that his stuff, though at times very scholarly, were quite fun to read. Each would have a humorous undercurrent there somewhere, but he always had respect for his subjects - except, perhaps, those that deserve the full weight of his derision, though I can't remember on which occasion.

One fun article was about how common images of half-naked men were in the Philippines ("Musings on the Filipino male in advertising", Off The Edge, February 2009). The accompanying photo we had was quite low res, and I didn't relish the task of looking for a better one. We eventually settled for a less than ideal picture of "that ding-dong".

I didn't get a copy of Fringe Benefits that day. I felt I'd read enough of McKay for a while, but only as a proofreader. And I don't think it's okay to review stuff I had a part in publishing. So don't let it stop you from getting one.

Buckets Fixes Melancholy

Coming back from a wedding celebration, I got stuck in a traffic jam outside Dataran Sunway at Kota Damansara. On The Om Nom Show at BFM89.9 was artisanal ice cream entrepreneur Elaine Gunting.

As the segment wrapped up, John Lim asked Elaine where her business was located.

"We're located at Kota Damansara-"

...What?

"That's where our factory is, The Strand," she continued. "We opened some counters to complement the production line. When we experiment with different flavours, we take it out and people can sample them..."

No prizes for guessing what I did next.

Buckets was tucked deep inside The Strand, far from the main road and out of sight. Two tables, several seats and barebones decor. The co-founder who calls himself Jay was standing by, "one leg kicking" as he said. He wasted little time, and I was sampling a number of flavours.

Buckets is about cold stuff: ice creams, sorbets and yoghurt-based desserts. Their ice creams are made the gelato way, with fresh raw ingredients. To make it low fat, they use palm-based stuff. They sell their stuff to a few cool customers, which include Ole-Ole Bali, Sushi-Tei and 7ate9.

"We use real fruits and ingredients," said Jay in his sales pitch. "When you eat our sorbets, it's like eating the fruit itself. If you tried similar products from other manufacturers, the first-"

"You'll taste the ice first," I cut in.

"That's right. But here, you taste the fruit first."

He didn't have to try so hard. The cool and refreshing rock melon and passionfruit sorbets released the fruits' aromas as it melted in the mouth. Likewise the banana ice cream. Some of the products had Italian names, which made selection a tad difficult.

I had a double scoop: vanilla and banana. Jay pointed out the black dots in the vanilla ice cream, which I knew were vanilla beans. The real deal. Strawberries from France, Thai honey mangoes, and pisang berangan for their banana ice creams. An ongoing experiment involves stevia, a healthier natural sweetener.

"Try this and tell me what you think," said Jay as he handed me a spoon of chocolate ice cream made with "the finest" dark Belgian chocolate. I cleared my mouth of the other flavours and in it went.

Wow. The chocolate hit the tongue almost immediately and seconds later, the aroma reached my nostrils via my throat.

They choose their raw ingredients based on not just on flavour, but also how the ingredients react to being frozen, then thawed, mixed with milk and blended in. Changes in quality and flavour can occur between box to bucket.

The ice creams were great. The lingering feel of the slick palm-based fat is to be expected - ice creams need some kind of fat in them.

A family walked in and bought a cup or two. Then, a couple waltzed in with a print-out for a Milk-A-Deal redemption. They were similarly sold on many of the flavours, particularly the sorbet and the yoghurt-based thingy with mixed berries. Then Jay mentioned durian.

What? I didn't hear about this.

After the couple leave, I asked for a single scoop of durian. After my two scoops of vanilla and banana.

Jay was incredulous. "Serious?"

Of course. In a year, durian rarely happens.

Of course it was good. It's durian. Buckets, Jay said, only use the expensive maoshanwang varietal.

The durian ice cream was the perfect ending for my incidental visit to this hidden dessert corner. Also a sweet way to end a hectic, draining week. Funny how things just seem to fall into place like that.

So this must be what it's like for Melody when she's having a good day.

---

Premium Buckets Sdn Bhd

38-G & 38-1, Jalan PJU 5/20B
The Strand, Kota Damansara
47810 Petaling Jaya, Selangor

CLOSED FOR GOOD

Review for Revenue?

Carol Hoenig, a freelance writer and publishing consultant, asks whether one should pay to have books reviewed. She expresses guilt over not being able to review every book delivered to her, but stresses that priority must be given to her paying gigs.

"The shame of it is that there are fewer places to have one's book reviewed, thanks to so many publications eliminating the position or having folded altogether," she says at one point.

Hers is perhaps the longest question I've read so far on whether paid reviews are relevant in the age of the digital freebie.

...Probably not.

The modern phenomenon of shrinking attention spans is eating into a lot of the stuff we do, including writing reviews of anything that justifies a paycheque. Nowadays, the gauge to whether a book is good is the number of stars or votes it gets on Amazon, Librarything or Good Reads. In short, "Is this book worth my money and time?"

...Probably not.

Reviews of a book - of anything - are subject to the fancies or foibles of those who pen them. Not everybody thinks Phillip Roth is a writer, and still many others wonder, "How the hell did this book get so-and such prize?" If one has trawled through the 20-odd pages of reviews for a popular book in Amazon before deciding to buy it, chances of a 50/50 "I will like/hate this book" will still be high enough to give pause.

So why write reviews at all?

I suppose it depends on where the review is going to be published.

It's true that the mainstream media nowadays sees little reason to publish book reviews or book-related features, especially when the featured books are not considered commercial successes. In the old, old days when books were relatively a luxury and a bit later, associated with culture and enlightenment, reviewers (or whatever they're called back then), could show off a little by disassembling a book and calling out the author on plot devices, characters and the hidden messages, cutting commentary and whatnot, disguised as a work of literature.

Though that aspect of the reviewer's job remains, modern reviews are geared towards selling books, hence the "balanced" review, even for books one knows are unequivocally bad. Of course, a review for the mainstream media has to be of a certain length, depth and quality for payment to be justified.

But will it be enough to make people care and, maybe, shuffle off to the bookstore to pick up a copy and see if the reviewer is right?

...Probably not.

The increasingly huge freebie pool comes with history's biggest caveat emptor sign. When free doesn't necessarily mean quality or veracity, you'd be a fool to believe everything you read on the web. At home, book reviews tend to be supportive, if not "balanced", so I don't think the question of ethics and "honesty" in one's paid review really applies.

Nevertheless, we should probably be grateful that the mainstream media hasn't given up on books yet. Though it is foolhardy to pay the bills by solely reviewing books, those who still write reviews will have a platform to publish - and maybe an additional, albeit small, income stream.

...And this is the longest preamble to my reply to Ms Hoenig's question.

Which is, should reviews be paid for? By paid reviews, I assume she's not talking about those commissioned by newspapers or magazines, but the freebies gathering dust on her table, which she might review on her blog or web site if... .

...Probably not.

When a publisher, agent or bookstore (chain) sends you a book, it implies that they are confident that your blog, newspaper or online portal can provide some degree of visibility for whatever they send you. It is, I think, not a decision made lightly. Every printed book sent to a reviewer means one less sale, on top of postage. That sort of suggests you should do something with it, even if the letter says you are not obliged to.

Lots of books are released each year and some really good ones get swamped by the buzz over hyped-up commercial successes. Reviewers should take a chance on some books not extensively covered by the press. Not to mention the thrill - and spill - of the gamble when you, if you can, dive into the book pile at a newspaper's HQ.

And if the book is not available in your local bookstores? Who cares? There are no borders in cyberspace. Someone in Poughkeepsie, New York might want to know if that book he's looking up is worth his time and money. Your review could help him decide.

Write the damn review(s). Find the time. Got books you're "not obliged to review"? 500 words, minimum. Maybe less if you're a blogger, or a reviewer at The Independent. Quote some passages to complete the word count. When it's done and posted, that's your obligation, there. That's also material for your blog, and a free book for your bookshelf.

...Probably not a good idea to wait until the book is out of print.

(Disclosure: I have missed deadlines before. You don't need to know how many times. This is not about me.)

I guess the writing of book reviews, along with the reading and writing of books, has always been a labour of love, and we know just how much love pays where cash-strapped, overworked and stress-out freelancers are concerned. Labour of love, or simply a chance to show off one's biblio-forensics skills.

But as long as there's a space for the book review, those who want to, will. If you can spin an entertaining review out of a good (or bad) book, that's even better.

"Can you tell me how?"

...Probably not. That's something you have to discover. Just like what I'm trying to do.

Jolly Good Jaunt

I had fun with these books, I really did.

However, several minor details: The first paragraph was supposed to be the standfirst, and the first letters of "South Extension Amateur Theatrical Society" and "Delhi Institute for Rationalism and Education" were meant to be in bold, in case nobody gets the joke; the initials for both "organisations" spell "SEATS" (as in theatre seats) and "DIRE" (presumably the state of superstition vs rationality in India).

India's CSICOP, meanwhile, is known for its mouthful of a full name: Indian Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), which is an affiliate of the US-based Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).

Hence, the "fixed" version of the published review below.

Maybe I should have left more clues or something for the editing team.

---

Jolly good jaunt

Reading about the exploits of a Punjabi private detective and his assistants is like taking a fun and fast-paced Indian autorickshaw ride

first published in The Star, 12 June 2011


It's been a while since I've read a good detective story, especially one that's not only action-packed but also has witty writing, fast pacing, and quirky dialogue.

And a memorable lead character like Vishwas Puri. The portly, pompous Punjabi private eye and proprietor of Most Private Investigators Ltd is the protagonist of British journalist-turned-author Tarquin Hall's series of detective novels set in India.

For Puri, danger is his ally (he dices with death with each chilli pakora he eats) and confidentiality is his agency's watchword (never mind his Bollywood dreams for his case files).

Tarquin Hall's Vishwas Puri novels

Being mentioned in the same breath as Johnnies-come-lately Poirot, Holmes, et al (who, like himself, don't really exist) offends him. Puri insists that his profession, his methods, go way back to the time of Indian sage and diplomat Chanakya, who wrote a treatise on spying and investigation over 2,000 years ago. He scoffs at younger competitors who appear to watch too much CSI, dress like Horatio Caine and think the handheld UV light is the ultimate crime-solving tool. Portly he may be, but he's also tough in his own way: Have you ever eaten a naga morich, one of the world's hottest chillies, without flinching?

Good detectives in India don't work alone, so Puri has a team of experts, most of whom are code named. There's Tubelight, a former professional thief; Handbrake, Puri's chauffeur and once-cab driver; Nepali femme fatale Facecream; tech wizard Flush; Ms Chadda, telephone operator of many voices; and Elizabeth Rani, Puri's secretary. At home there's his loyal wife Rumpi and his mum. Puri's mum, known only as Mummy, is a bit of a sleuth herself and is, apparently, something of a clairvoyant.

But this is India, and his talents don't appear to receive great acclaim. Puri languishes in semi-obscurity, largely scorned by the police. His daily bread involves sussing out prospective grooms and numerous petty crimes, when he's not solving major cases such as the Case Of The Laughing Peacock, the Case Of The Pundit With Twelve Toes, and one about a missing polo elephant.

We are thrust into the Case Of The Missing Servant, Hall's first book in the series, in the middle of one such groom-sussing stakeout. Not long after Puri wraps that up, a clean lawyer – a rarity in modern India, it seems – comes a-calling. The lawyer's maidservant is missing and awful rumours of her disappearance are swirling around him. It's not long before the lawyer is jailed for a crime he says he didn't commit – and then someone tries to shoot Puri.

The bigger hazard for our sleuth, however, is his girth, which marks him as a candidate for obesity-related ills, but that has not diminished his love of fiery chillies, pakoras, and other spicy, buttery Indian fare. The Missing Servant also introduces us to India's marriage customs, class divisions and its supposedly shady real estate scene.

We know that Puri survives the assassination attempt, the chillies and cholesterol, because The Case Of The Man Who Died Laughing came out about a year later. The second book highlights the struggle between superstition and science in India, with a bit of sci-fi thrown in. Guru-buster Dr Suresh Jha is killed, seemingly by the four-armed goddess Kali. The murder victim and his association appears to be based on real-life Indian guru-buster, the late Basava Premanand and his rationalist group, the Indian CSICOP (Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal).

While Puri and gang are off chasing goddesses, magicians and a fake guru, wife Rumpi and Mummy amuse themselves investigating a robbery at a kitty party (typical ones usually involve middle-aged women gossiping and drinking tea, so fish your minds out of the gutter now, please).

Hall's writing and language grow on you, like an overly chummy Punjabi with a booming voice who wraps a thick hairy arm around your shoulder, hustles you to the nearest bar and plies you with drinks. I found myself wanting to speak in tongues by the time I finished the two books, rolling my tongue outrageously as I aped the characters. Plus, you get more than one case and more than one detective. Mummy holds her own as she pokes her nose into danger – and grows on you as Delhi's answer to Miss Marple or Jessica Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote.

Word play abounds. In The Missing Servant, one chuckles at the shallow pun in the desperate lawyer's plea to "find this bloody Mary!"; Puri's multi-talented telephonist belongs to the South Extension Amateur Theatrical Society. In The Man Who Died Laughing, the late Dr Jha is founder and head of the Delhi Institute for Rationalism and Education. And then there's the running gag that involves Puri getting a knock in the head, either by accident or by an unknown assailant.

Hall's India is one big caricature where circumstances serve the cartoonish narrative and plot. The unsavoury socioeconomical and political climate and unflattering stereotypes help make Puri and gang, victims and the supporting good guys stand out – perhaps a bit too much. Though Puri is not above it all. Problems at home include water and power cuts ("load shedding") and a brother-in-law who fancies himself Punjab's Donald Trump. And our old-fashioned gumshoe bemoans creeping Western influences and declining morals, and believes that mums – and women in general – don't make good detectives.

But you won't care, because you'll have too much fun with these novels. I sure did.

However, there have been no new Vish Puri novels out since The Man Who Died Laughing. It would be a shame for the series to end after such a spectacular take-off. And I really want to know about that missing polo elephant.

---

The Case of the Missing Servant

Tarquin Hall
Arrow Books (2009)
312 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-09-952523-3

The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing

Tarquin Hall
Hutchinson (2010)
334 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-09-192567-3

Some Monthly Reads

Some books slated for review in The Star arrived at my desk today, courtesy of the MPH book people.

Mitchell Zuckoff's Lost in Shangri-La (left) and Chan Koonchung's The Fat Years

• Lost in Shangri-La
  A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and
  the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II
  Mitchell Zuckoff
  Harper (2011)
  Non-fiction
  384 pages
  ISBN: 978-0-06-209358-5
• The Fat Years
  The Notorious Novel No-one in China Dared Publish
  Chan Koonchung
  Translated from the Chinese by Michael S Duke
  With a Preface by Julia Lovell
  Doubleday (July 2011)
  Fiction
  307 pages
  ISBN: 9780385619189

The Fat Years will probably be slated for publication in The Star's Monthly Reads in July. And it means I'd better wrap up this month's review.

I haven't been as prolific as I'd like with regards to book reviews. I'm trying to be cautious as well, because writing a review based on first impressions can be a risky proposition.

Guess it's time to get cracking.

The Dulang Washer

Working on this book was fun. That the story is probably one of the better ones we've received so far this year had something to do with it. At posting time, it's still with the printers, hence the cover photo.

We intend to release it this August, but it might be in bookstores as early as next month. For a sneak peek at the novel's backstory, go here.

The Dulang Washer is set in Malaya, in 1890. In the tin-mining camps of Perak’s Kinta Valley, only the strongest and bravest survive. One day, an ox-drawn cart rolls into one such camp. Among the human cargo inside is...

Mee Ling. The young, wilful daughter of a farmer in China, her desire for freedom and independence leads to her abduction and arrival in a foreign land and perhaps a fate worse than death, if not for...

Aisha, who takes the frightened Mee Ling under her wing. Burdened by a secret tragedy and driven by a sacred vow, the mysterious Malay maiden labours as a dulang washer to support two families, while staying above the mine’s politics and fending off the advances of the mine’s unscrupulous proprietor...

Fook Sin, who has enriched himself at the expense of the mining camp's indentured labourers. He sees the camp as his fiefdom and will brook no opposition to his rule. He also covets Aisha, whom he hopes to add to his stash of secretly hoarded treasures. However, his reign will soon be threatened by...

Donald Redfern, a former British army officer who left his country for the chance to better his young family's life. Sent to the mine as its new overseer, Redfern finds succour from his loneliness and homesickness in Aisha's language lessons and small gestures of compassion. But he will also clash with...

Hun Yee, a young Hakka miner whose recent victory against his opium addiction allows him to once again pursue his dreams of being the boss of his own mine. But when he acts against a fellow miner’s unjust punishment, he inadvertently challenges Redfern’s authority and piques the interest of both Mee Ling and Aisha.

Of all the myriad hazards of the mining camp, which will prove to be the more dangerous: Fook Sin’s desire to cling to power and his ill-gotten wealth, or Redfern's growing obsession with Aisha, which she'd unwittingly fuelled with her kindness? And what will this mean for Hun Yee's dream, Aisha's vow and Mee Ling's hunger for freedom?


Paul Callan was born in Dublin, Ireland. His love of storytelling was fuelled while attending Chanel College in North Dublin. As a young man in London, he abandoned his first attempt at becoming a novelist in pursuit of a business career. After marrying his Malaysian wife, he visited Malaysia many times, and fell in love with the country and its people. He now divides his time between his homes in Kuala Lumpur and London. The Dulang Washer is his first novel.

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The Dulang Washer

An Epic Tale of Love, Valour and Secrets

Paul Callan
MPH Group Publishing
388 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-967-5997-55-6

Web site

Buy from Kinokuniya | MPHOnline.com

A Monsoon Blows In

"This is a true story of 1930s Malaysia, of jungle operations, submarines and spies in WWII, and of the postwar Malayan Emergency, as experienced by an extraordinary man."

Days ago, out of the blue, Monsoon Books offered me books to review or feature in the media. A package from them came last Friday, but I was not informed until yesterday evening.

Malayan Spymaster: Memoirs of a Rubber Planter, Bandit Fighter and Spy is the story of Boris Hembry, a British rubber planter who joined the fight against the Japanese occupiers in World War II as an intelligence officer and later, the communist insurgents during the Emergency.

Hembry's memoirs were written for his family and not meant for publication, but they felt that his life in Malaya and his struggles deserved a much wider readership.

"We dedicate it to those expatriates of many generations whose devotion to that beautiful country and its peoples helped to lay the foundations of present-day peaceful and prosperous Malaysia," writes Hembry's son, John in the preface. Boris Hembry passed on in September 1990.

My thanks to Monsoon Books for what promises to be an interesting read, and many thanks to the family of the late Boris Hembry for their generosity in sharing his extraordinary story.

A Subtle Degree Of Restraint

At a series of creative writing workshops under the British Council Creative Cities programme, run with UK-based writer development organisation Spread The Word, participants looked to the energy and character of the city of Kuala Lumpur for inspiration. The stories in this collection are the results of those workshops.

Creative Cities is a British Council project set up in 2008 and was developed in 15 countries in Europe. It provides a platform and a toolkit which can be used by individuals and organisations to help improve their cities.

Spread The Word, with the assistance of established professional writers, helps writers reach their full potential through workshops, mentoring schemes and other activities.

Most of the stories take place in KL, or were inspired by KL. In an urban restaurant, a woman is irked by the presence of a huge round vase as she explores love and weight loss. Will the vase survive? ...And how delicious are those after-lunch mochi?

A married woman struggles with her husband's infidelity and forbidden feelings for a neighbour's teenage son. One outlet for her frustrations involves the desperate housewife fantasies she writes on her computer. How will this play out?

As she swaps stories with her friends at a swanky Bangsar joint, an uptown woman learns something that sours the sweetness in her little secret. Shock! Horror! Will she consign the little package she's carrying into the dustbin?

A timid teacher finds the courage to stand up for what's right. But troubles at home threatens to turn her workplace triumph into a pyrrhic victory. Despite a flu, a man at Amritsar is awed by the vision of loveliness he guides in a search for the mysterious beauty's roots, miles away from home. She finds what she's looking for, but has he?

Across the city, viewers following a tacky game show witness an unassuming contestant's spectacular victory and watch her humiliation as the prize for her efforts is revealed. A crowd gathering at the scene of a drowning brings a man back into his childhood and the tragic death of a schoolmate.

A Subtle Degree of Restraint and Other Stories is published by MPH Group Publishing and will be available in all major bookstores.

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A Subtle Degree of Restraint and Other Stories

Various Authors
MPH Group Publishing
138 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-967-5997-47-1

Buy from MPHOnline.com

Look, Books!

...because my brain, like Odo the Changeling from Star Trek: TNG, is still reconstituting from the weekend and is unable to come up with snazzy titles.

Last Friday, someone from books distributor Pansing dropped by. Earlier, we passed them a copy of a book we could not distribute for some reason or another, hoping they could. We received that copy today, but that book's status is still unclear. I hope to have some good news regarding it soon.

Some new books from Pansing

They also left us with a bagful of books, three of which were passed to me. My weekend reading list may soon spill over to my weekdays...

• The Poison Tree
  Erin Kelly
  Hodder and Stoughton (2010)
  Fiction
  359 pages (with Prologue for The Sick Rose)
  ISBN: 978-1-444-70106-7
• Inside Wikileaks
  My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website
  Daniel Domscheit-Berg and Tina Klopp
  Jonathan Cape (2011)
  Non-Fiction/Current Affairs/Political
  282 pages
  ISBN: 978-0-224-09401-6
• The Plantation
  Di Morrissey
  Pan Macmillan Australia (2010)
  Fiction
  458 pages
  ISBN: 978-1-4050-3998-7

Okay, so not all of them are "new" new, but new enough. We will have to do something with some, if not all, of these books.

Times Of Turmoil

Some may complain about books that's clean, not exciting and all that. In short, boring. That was my very first impression of this collection. But I returned to it weeks later and was amazed at the shift in my perception.

How many weeks later? I'm not sharing.

As a result, I may have been... effusive in my praise of the book. But after rolling around in what passes for journalism these days, what a gust of fresh air!

Something to keep firmly in mind.

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Times of turmoil

A deft touch conveys stories of upheaval without resorting to unrealistic extremes

first published in The Star, 03 June 2011


Isn't today's media action-packed? Blood and guts, bullets and bombs, skin and sex, and reality TV shows where f-bombs drop like names at a socialites' ball. And it seems as though whole sections in bookstores both real and virtual have been taken over by genres that combines elements of all the above and then some.

I wonder if it is perhaps in reaction to this trend that publishers Marshall Cavendish have re-released something cleaner and calmer.

Born in 1951 in Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar), to parents of Chinese descent, Minfong Ho was raised in Thailand and graduated from America's prestigious Cornell University with a bachelor's degree in economics. She became a journalist, and then taught English at Thailand's Chiang Mai University. She currently resides in New York with her family.

During her first years at Cornell, she turned to writing to fight her homesickness. Her short story, Sing To The Dawn, won a prize and was later expanded into a novel published in 1975. She would go on to write more novels and story collections. Rice Without Rain (1986) was based on her experiences with Thailand's turbulent politics in the 1970s, and her times as an aid volunteer helping Cambodian refugees during the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia inspired The Clay Marble (1991).

Marshall Cavendish has compiled these three works into a single volume, The Minfong Ho Collection. All three novels feature young Thai or Cambodian village lasses whose daily struggles are compounded by bigger forces intruding upon their little worlds.

In Sing To The Dawn, we are introduced to Dawan, a brilliant, headstrong student who wins a scholarship and a chance to study in a big-city school.

However, she faces objections from her parents and the apathy and fatalism of her fellow villagers, all of whom seem to view the idea of a girl getting educated as something radical. Her so-called blessing also drives a wedge between her and her brother.

Seventeen-year-old Jinda gets caught up in Thailand's student-led democracy movement in the 1970s in Rice Without Rain.

A group of university students arrive at her village, bringing with them the promise of change. Brought to the city, ostensibly to speak out against greedy landlords, Jinda soon learns that she is but a pawn in a bigger struggle, and that the price of change may be too high to pay.

The Clay Marble's 12-year-old Dara has lived through two "liberation" campaigns: one led by the Khmer Rouge against the Cambodian royals, and the other by Vietnamese forces fighting the previous regime. When the Khmer Rouge's reign crumbles, she and her family join the refugees fleeing towards the Thai-Cambodia border. Along the way, Dara meets a fellow refugee with a knack for making toys out of clay. But the peace she finds in a refugee camp along the border is eventually shattered when the war finally catches up.

What's refreshing about these three works is how unremarkable they look at first glance. Ho doesn't dramatise the human tragedies with graphic depictions of wartime atrocities – something that seems to be de rigueur nowadays in print, on TV and online.

Unlike the reports filed by some of those "celebrity" journalists on 24-hour "news channels", the subjects take centre stage, not the writer. Ho's use of simple, unadorned language does not detract from the respect and sensitivity she shows her characters and their world, and the gravity of the issues the young heroines face.

Gender and class discrimination, corruption, superstition versus modernity, and the callousness of the powers-that-be in their bid to maintain the status quo become all the more poignant when one sees that little has changed in these countries since these works were first published in the 1970s and 1980s.

In this collection, Ho does not shed excessive blood, rip bodices or curse like a flotilla of pirates to tell her tales. She doesn't have to. The deft touch of her pen, tempered by first-hand experience, brings to life the voices and the pain of these three village girls, and that alone is enough. Though meant for children and young adults, readers of all ages will find this honest, easy read almost like journalism at its finest.

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The Minfong Ho Collection

Minfong Ho
Marshall Cavendish Editions
399 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-981-4302-45-6