Reviewed by John Cairns
Satisfaction, even joy, accompanies the discovery of a new author, one previously unfamiliar, who proves his ability within a few pages and then tells an exciting tale. That's how it goes with Julian Lees and his Asia-based novel, The Fan Tan Players (2010, Sandstone Press, Scotland, 375 pages).
Often Lees builds passages so vivid and intensely realistic that there's no choice but to pause, thinking, “Wow, this guy has what it takes?” For example, at the beginning: “With little to dull its power from the Luzon Strait to the Canton coast, the tropical storm roared off the South China Sea and hurtled across the Praya Grande. Whooshing across the face of the sheltered harbour, it flashed silver spears of lighting from keyholes in the sky. Marl white sheets of rain, like iron wires, cracked along the ground, drawing a net over the earth. Gutters overflowed and trenches grew fat with broken timber and shards of glass.” Then readers need a jowl-jolting, body-shake to dry off wet-dog style.
And how's this to encourage keeping pet cats? “In the poorer parts of town, near the Kun Lam Temple, the rodents shot from under the shadows of the shanty huts, darting into homes, up cocklofts, hiding behind wardrobes and under workbenches. They carried the stink of rotted meat and faeces; weeks-old piss matted to the hairs on their spines. Clawed toes, brown as rust, scraped against doors; long-nailed hands dug into soft, barren walls. The vibrations of their feet passed over houses. Click, clack, click. Upon rooftops, onto drain pipes. Click, clack, click. The rats scurried up the cheekbones of buildings, pressed their snouts under shophouse floors, dangled from telegraph lines.”
Partly love story, family saga, historical novel and action thriller, The Fan Tan Players follows Russian émigré Nadia Shashkova and her Scottish lover, Iain Sutherland, in three eventful years: 1928, 1937 and 1945. Nadia lives in Macau, working in a cigar shop where she meets Iain, a diplomat of sorts. Soon they develop a fascination for each other.
With parts of the story set in Russia, Scotland and Hong Kong, Lees ably handles most geographic and historic details. “By the bus terminus, they witnessed a procession of shorn-headed Chinese men wearing wooden blocks round their necks being paraded through the streets of the city. Their legs were in shackles. The message on their block-collars read: ‘Condemned to death for opposing the Japanese Imperial Army’.”
But some details appear irrelevant. “Elychoko was a little village which turned dark at night because there was no electricity and grew quiet enough to hear a marmot burrowing in the snow outside. It was a place with crooked, rough-stone lanes that had never seen a motorcar, a place shrunken from the world.” Presumably, the absence of electricity and motorcars means little in 1928, which predates such things in many places.
At times, the characters possess almost unbelievable powers of observation. When Nadia visits Scotland, she isn't impressed. “From her isolation in the back seat, Nadia watched avidly as the city panned out before her eyes: through the pillows of haze, she saw line after line of hunger marchers and picketers and boarded up mills, shop windows covered with newspaper, children scavenging in shoes without laces.” From a moving vehicle on unfamiliar streets, who notices or can see if the children outside have shoelaces?
Fan tan, a much-mentioned game of chance, has a long history in China. But despite Macau's modern status as Asia's gambling capital, neither Nadia nor Iain visit casinos much. Instead, they gamble in other ways. “ ‘I want you to come with me.’
‘That's not going to do your career any good, is it? Bringing back a White Russian.’
‘It's a gamble I'm prepared to take.’ ”
Ultimately, the stakes increase to life-or-death. “He flicked the fence with his wrist and the thin sound reverberated down the channel. ‘It's a big gamble...’
‘I was always a good fan tan player.’ ”
Despite the magnificence of many passages, Lees gets careless with others. “Holding her friend's eye, Nadia stepped out onto the landing....” Ouch! That sounds gruesome, but what Nadia really held was her friend's gaze and attention.
On plot and character development, The Fan Tan Players rates closer to adequate than outstanding. Some exciting episodes, like a risky rescue in Russia and a daring escape from a wartime-Hong Kong internment camp, reek of improbability.
As always, there's nothing pleasant about war. “A hushed fragrance of death filled her nostrils. There were more decapitated heads to her left and right, one was still wearing spectacles. She saw... a group of headless bodies lying on their backs, abdomens torn open, the sand around them sodden with blood and entrails....”
In hindsight, depression-era Scotland looks prosperous compared to Japanese-occupied Hong Kong. “Everywhere Nadia looked, she saw the hungry, frightened features of the impoverished, appearing as mutilated and broken as the architecture that surrounded them.... Ragged men, mouths agape, scavenged the streets for combustible material for fuel.... Aged women, their filthy hair full of nits, picked at the wens on their cheeks.... Sparrows, twitching their heads, pirouetted on the shorn electric wires, doing a dance of death.”
At times, Lees lacks subtlety. As characters chat about their histories, readers so easily detect the author's technique to supply background details that it's distracting. “ ‘Were you born here, in Macao?’
Nadia shook her head. ‘Russia.’ She felt impelled to offer a similar level of detail as Izabel had. ‘In a village near Tver, about 200 miles south of St. Petersburg. When I was seven....’ ”
A theme emerges from words that Nadia's father once whispered to her and that echo across time: “The problem with us Russians is that we spend all our time reminiscing and forget about the present. We must love what we have now before it has vanished forever.”
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Lees studied in Britain before becoming a stockbroker. The Fan Tan Players is his second novel. His first, A Winter Beauty, appeared in 2006. He lives in Malaysia.
Despite moments of weakness, The Fan Tan Players shows much more strength. Without hesitation, Lees flexes his impressive storytelling muscles, giving readers an undeniable tingle of anticipation that he may have many more tales to tell.
Approval rating: 81 per cent.
For more information: www.sandstonepress.com
(December 6, 2011)
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