Customer Reviews

The Harmony Silk Factory

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Stop the publishing industry, I want to get off! By shoveling out tons of derivative crap like Nicole Krauss' "History of Love," real gems are getting overlooked. Despite the off-putting title, "Harmony Silk Factory" is one such gem, a very pleasant surprise that much outperforms the ritualistic pap that's come to dominate so much "Asian-American fiction." Tash Aw is a truly gifted writer who manages to weave together fascinating tidbits of Malaysia's history and culture with the story of a screwed-up family. Best of all, he tells the story in the voice of a terrific, stereotype-busting character-a pedantic, vain and genuinely funny riff on a dutiful son, a kind of Tristram Shandy who finds himself in Southeast Asia. None of these all-wise, all-suffering stock characters who have come to dominate this psuedo-genre. Aw is a great talent, and I hope he finds the readers he deserves. Please try this book!

British administered Malaya during the 1940's is fraught with ethnic and cultural tension. The Japanese are advancing down though South Asia, having just occupied much of Manchuria. The British are hanging onto Malaya by a thread, there are already rumblings amongst the locals of a communist takeover. In this hauntingly beautiful country, everything is about to change with certainty that "death erases all traces, all memories of lives that once existed."

Set against this tumultuous backdrop, The Harmony Silk Factory tells the story of Johnny Lim, a Chinese silk merchant who was raised, not only as a thief, opium smugger and black marketer, but also a murderer and a "monster." Johnny is truly an enigmatic character; a gifted son of a poor family, as a young man he ekes out a living working in a British-run tin mine in the Kinta Valley area where he is subjected to the racism if the cruel, incompetent managers.

But Johnny has a gift for machines, "the parts of an engine falling away into his hands like a piece of silk" and he uses these talents to his best advantage. Soon after leaving the mines, Johnny, traverses the country, eventually turning into a brilliantly successful salesman at the Tiger Brand Trading Company. Only the kindly owner of the shop, Tiger Tan, is higher than Johnny in the chain of command, but Tiger takes an immediate liking to the ambitious boy.

When Tiger suspiciously dies, without warning, Johnny, now the factory's most knowledgeable silk merchant takes over the company, turning it into the most notorious establishment in the country where only the privileged few pass through its doors. Having achieved material success and notoriety, Johnny readily admits that the Factory now "belongs to him; it is utterly his: to mold, control, love, and destroy." A self confessed communist, he avidly reads Carl Marx, while using his newfound wealth to fund a fledging Communist guerilla army.

But Johnny remains mysterious and unknowable. When he collects taxes on behalf of Mamoru Kunichika, a debonair and smooth Japanese professor, is he essentially selling himself out to the Japanese? Or is he actually a fearless communist guerrilla who is working with the grass roots to defeat the enemy imposters? Is he a self-made business wizard or a scheming manipulator? Or perhaps he's a doting husband, who fawns over he new wife Snow Soong, rumored to be the most beautiful woman in the Kinta valley.

One thing remains clear - ordinary people are fearful of a man such as Johnny. His son Jasper, who narratives the first half of this epic story, is adamant that "his father had been born with an illness, something that had eaten the core out of him, infecting him forever." He became "almost mythical, and otherworldly phantom, not at all flesh and blood."

Author, Tash Aw, divides the novel into a triptych of three different narrators, each giving their own interpretation of events reflecting their various personalities, biases, and judgments. Snow, who dies in childbirth, narrates the middle section though a series of diary entries, and Peter Wormwood, a flamboyant, sexually ambivalent English aesthete tells the third section. Snow is torn between her loyalty for Johnny and her volatile attraction to Kunichika, while Peter becomes a sort of mentor and confidante to Johnny, teaching him all things British, and advising him on how to cope with Snow's snotty parents.

The Harmony Silk Factory is an exquisitely patterned mosaic of memory and reminiscence. Peter, leaving England forever, for a paradise, a tropical Arcadia, his vision of perfection, tries to piece his recollections of Johnny together as the fabric of memory comes apart his my hands. "For those few brief seconds, I found myself looking into the face of a friend. The only one I would ever love." And for Snow, there are things she has already lost, but what will happen to her memories? "The obstacles are insurmountable. The boundaries still there, He possesses a world that is forever locked away from me."

Aw makes the most of his exotic setting - the fragile beauty of the earth, the vivid colors, the weight and luminosity of the flora and fauna. His story is mercilessly gripping and his prose is often lucid, uncluttered, and beautiful.

There is a sense of inexorable mystery and a feeling of timeless abundance as these three stories weave together, bringing a fully-fledged portrait of Johnny Lim to life. Going backwards and forwards through time, The Harmony Silk Factory is an elegant, intimate book; a literary mirage of echoing voices and memories. Mike Leonard June 05.

At the end of the introduction, The Harmony Silk Factory's first narrator Jasper declares emphatically that he is "ready to give [us] this, `The True Story of the Infamous Chinaman Called Johnny." In the story Johnny was the merchant owner of the title's business, as well as the most important man in the Malayan Kinta valley. According to Jasper, Johnny was a bootlegger, a cheat, a murderer, a Communist, and a traitor, among other things. Johnny Lim was also Jasper's father. It is this connection that hints to the reader that this `true story' is not the `whole story.'

Tash Aw's first novel, actually his first work of published fiction in any format, examines the infamous Chinaman from three points of view: first the son Jasper attempts to cover most of his father's life, then Johnny's wife Snow records the events and thoughts on a holiday in a personal diary, and finally a geriatric English monk named Peter Wormwood reminisces on his past with Johnny. Yet although the three voices reveal what they can about Johnny part of him remains an unknowable mystery. While the character's relationships with Johnny become more intimate as the novel progresses Johnny becomes more mythical in the reader's mind.

Jasper, for instance, tells how his father was shot on the day Malaysian independence was finally declared in 1957. Because Johnny survives the assassination attempt people begin to say that he is invincible, otherworldly.

Aw has cultivated an elegant and tragic story over three distinct narrative voices, a story that is bigger than even the legends surrounding the Harmony Silk Factory's operator. The characters are all first exotic, like the jungles of the Malayan setting, but they become almost wonderfully known. Wonderfully because, while most of the novel is set at the end of the British colonizing of the Malayan peninsula just before World War II, this tropical story rarely feels foreign or intimidating. Aw's prose is magical in its familiarity. We feel the warm water of the Malaccan straits in the evening just as we feel the impending sense of crisis as the Japanese prepare to take control of the colony from the British. Aw provides us with a sense of common history with this pacific country on the other side of the globe.

The Harmony Silk Factory is a narrative dealing primarily with Malaysia prior to the Second World War (also briefly discussing the situation during and after the war), as narrated by three distinct characters. The first section, narrated by Jasper, the son of the infamous Johnny Lim (possibly the protagonist, although we never hear from him directly), is interesting but not riveting. Jasper is the classic unreliable narrator, hating his father so much that we know he can't be objective. Second comes Snow, Jasper's mother and Johnny's wife, and here the narrative is bogged down in the minutiae of a jungle excursion. I was reminded forcefully of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, both by the setting and the painfully slow pacing, although I'm not convinced that Tash Aw is quite so profound. Finally comes Peter, Johnny's English friend; his section is the dullest, alternating between a retelling from his perspective of the same excursion and more about garden planning than I ever wanted to know--interspersed with a few crucial insights into previous events.

This isn't a bad story, although I found most of the characters unlikeable--Jasper's primary characteristics are arrogance and hatred of his father; Snow's, passivity; and Peter's, pretentiousness and self-absorption, while Johnny is such an enigma that we barely get to know him at all. However, the pacing is quite slow, and gets slower as it progresses. The author's use of multiple narrators who tell very different truths is a too-infrequently-used technique and he pulls it off well, which I suppose accounts for all the positive professional reviews. I give it three stars because neither the story nor the characters ever appealed to me; this was the only book available to me on a long flight, and otherwise I probably never would have finished it.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has a special interest in Malaysia or who enjoys long, leisurely-paced character studies, but the rest would be better off giving this one a pass.

I enjoyed this. It's hard to pigeon-hole what kind of book it is. Is it historical fiction? A character study? A literary exercise? What seems to begin as the story of a single man unfolds into a Rashomon-like tapestry of multiple narratives. At times it's poetic and surreal, at other times reminiscent of Graham Greene, still others maybe a little predictable and rough around the edges. It is something that we don't experience all that often in modern publishing, however, in that it seems to be a book that revels in being a book. This would be pleasant reading in the leisurely hours of a vacation, but maybe not so rewarding as a rush-hour confection to read on the train. Read it for the exotic location it evokes and the mysterious characters it reveals, but don't expect a tightly-wound plot or a lot of riveting action. The suspense here is understated and thoughtful, not loud or pulse-pounding; but if you're in the right mindset that's not a bad thing at all.

This is the underlying theme of this extraordinary first novel set in WWII era Malaya. Don't expect a book about contemporary Malaysia. The story revolves around Johnny Lim, as told by his son, his wife, and a British man who settles in Malaya/Malaysia and remains for the rest of his life. If you are looking for the absolute truth about Johnny or the other characters, you are not likely to find it. Each story is told from an individual perspective, leaving the reader with completely different ideas, but the truth may be made up of all these different pieces of information. The first story is told in a straightforward manner by the son, who sees his father as a criminal psychopath with no feelings for anyone else. The story told by the wife is like walking further and further inside a surrealist painting. It was hard to know what was fantasy and what was reality. The third story resolves some of this, but adds surprisingly new twists. The description and use of language is stunningly beautiful. I was reminded of The Hamilton Case in reading about the physical and psychological effects the jungle has--including in this book what it feels like having a poisonous snake land on your shoulder and take a bite of you before you know what's happening. The names have meanings, some of which are not apparent until the end (Snow, Honey, Jasper, Wormwood). And what really is the Harmony Silk Factory? Although it starts out like a literal plot kind of book, it really also is not what it appears. Keep an open mind and don't be fooled by the style of the first part. I think this author is wonderfully talented and hope he will be coming out with more novels. I would say definitely dont miss this one.

I have nothing against Tash Aw's writing style. However, I have the following comments to make -

1 ) The story is set in Malaya. Being a Malaysian, I note that
it is littered with geographical inaccuracies. Anyone reading
this book would assume that Kampar( in Kinta Valley,Perak )
is in close proximity to Cameron Highlands, Kuala Lumpur and
Malacca town ( apart from other towns ). In actual fact this
is not so. Malacca Town , for instance, is located in the
state of Malacca which is many hours away by road during
that time , not fifteen minutes away as indicated in the
story ; Cameron Highlands is made to look like a walk away
from Kampar town. I strongly feel that these inaccuracies
make the story lose its authencity. Perhaps, Tash Aw wrote
it with the non-Malaysian market in mind.

2 ) What's that with the trip to the mysterious Seven Maiden
Islands ( fictional ). Written to make the reader expect
some revelations, but nothing happens. The strange ruins,
for instance, or that howling wail in the night heard by
Snow and not the rest of the group. What was the purpose
of that trip, apart from the purported 'honeymoon' for
Johnny and Snow. Leaves you with a feeling of being
left hanging in the air, a story incomplete.

3 ) Tash aw's psyche seems more English than a local of
Malaya. This can be seen in the characterisations of
Jasper, Johnny Lim, Snow amd Peter Wormwood. He is more
in his element in the Peter Wormwood section of the book
than when dealing with local Malayans.

Overall, a commendable first publication but cannot figure out
why it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, my main reason for
reading it. I also cannot agree with the blurb 'a landmark work
of fiction' at the back cover. Somehow, I cannot get away from the feeling that the story should have been more fleshed out and complete.

I love Malaysia been there many times and to so many of the towns that were mentioned so I REALLY WANTED TO LIKE THIS STORY.

The beginning was about Johnny Lim. His childhood to his crooked adults years had me fascinated. Worthy of a 5 star

The middle part was more about Johnny Lim's wife her disappointment that Johnny never wanted to make love to her.Her fascination with a Japanese man who spent a lot of time with them. This was slow and not overly interesting. Worthy of a 2 star

The ending was about repeating so many things that were already told in the middle but by Johnny's British friend's memory and views on them. Boring.
Worthy of a 1 star.

Overall I can't recommend this book even after that brilliant start. It was Tash Aw first novel and his following books hopfully will be more tightly woven together without repeating so many minor plots twice.

The format Tash Aw presents in "The Harmony Silk Factory" is fresh and invigorating. We get three competing narratives, each one revealing its own truths about the life of Chinese-Malay wartime merchant Johnny Lim. In turn, each of the three recountings overturns inaccuracies or haziness presented in the previous version. It is the third tale, the one recounted by weary war-time friend Peter, that reveals the true essence of Johnny's character. We see it is not at all what Johnny's son Jasper has pulled together and presented to the reader in the first account.

My only problem with Mr. Aw's impressive debut is that I liked each of the three parts less in succession - Jasper's initial account is by far the strongest narrative (it's thrilling, in fact), while Snow's is less so, and the tale of Peter was, in this reader's opinion, quite a trudge to get through. Which is most unfortunate because that's where the gold is buried.

I read this right after reading The Group, another novel set in the same historical period, and presented in several voices. There the similarity ends. I loved this book, and was only mildly interested in the events and perspectives of The Group. The difference is partly attributable to the allure of the exotic setting, and partly to the keen insight and sure hand of the author, in this, his first novel.The actions and motivations of the main character are presented from three different perspectives; his son, his wife, and his English friend. They knew different men inhabiting the same body, of course, and we're not sure which viewpoint is closer to the truth. But oh, we care, and we continue to care throughout the book. For armchair travel to an exotic land and a mysterious time, for insights into Asian history during the Second World War, for understanding how life decisions are made in a very different cultural context, and for pure enjoyment, read The Harmony Silk Factory.