Not every child enjoys the daunting task of prowling in peculiar new surroundings. But starting on May 2, 1952, Martin Booth, a sensitive seven-year-old British boy, accepted the challenge by joining his parents in a move to Hong Kong.
Fifty years later, doctors diagnosed the adult Booth with a nasty brain tumor. Rather than despair, he excelled again, this time by writing Gweilo (Bantam Books, 2005, London, 380 pages), the richly detailed and entertaining memoirs of his childhood in the fast-growing British colony.
The author died soon after finishing the manuscript. But the resulting book, titled with a familiar Cantonese word meaning “pale devil” (foreigner), ensures that many thousands of readers will remember a young Booth.
Although writing as an ailing adult, Booth succeeds in recapturing boyish charm and vision. Readers feel magically younger when exploring through his eyes. He’s honest, witty and observant. For instance, he notices how the locals “blew their noses by thumbing one nostril shut and then, leaning forward over the gutter, blowing hard. Consequently, it was commonplace to see gobs of pale green snot lying by the side of the road alongside cracked melon-seed shells and chewed wedges of sugar cane…. I tried blowing my own nose in a similar fashion, yet I never mastered the knack. The snot came out all right, but it dribbled as slime down to my lips and chin instead of flying free.”
An explorer at heart, young Booth becomes equally at home on the backstreets of crowded Mongkok or in more luxurious surroundings on the Peak. Curiosity leads him everywhere from triad hideouts to dai pai dongs (sidewalk eateries), from squatter settlements to the posh Peninsula Hotel, from opium dens to outlying islands. He makes amazing discoveries (like the buried remains of a Japanese soldier), tastes exotic food, celebrates unfamiliar holidays and mixes easily among the locals, who enjoy stroking his golden hair for good luck. Always, he takes his readers along and puts them at ease. Those familiar with Hong Kong easily compare the place young Booth knew to that of their own experiences. The similarities seem countless, as do the differences.
Lacking a complex plot and a villain, Booth instead dwells on interesting experiences, colorful anecdotes and witty observations. Tensions simmer in a strained relationship between his mother, whom he adores, and his father, a less admired authority figure.
Earlier, Booth wrote other books, including The Triads about Chinese gangsters and The Doctor, The Detective and Arthur Conan Doyle about the creator of super-sleuth Sherlock Holmes. Booth’s fiction includes Hiroshima Joe, The Jade Pavilion and A Very Private Gentleman.
But Gweilo, sprouting from a child’s thoughts and mishaps five decades ago, stands as his best work.
Approval rating: 79 per cent.
For more information: www.booksatransworld.co.uk
(December 18, 2006)
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