Customer Reviews

The Monkey King

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Timothy Mo's first novel is a blisteringly funny account of the misadventures of Wallace Nolasco, a Macau native who marries into a wickedly dysfunctional Cantonese merchant's family. Set in an evocatively depicted 1950s Hong Kong, this book is a devastatingly funny account of Chinese culture and family life. In many ways it remains acccurate even today.

The Monkey King contains many many wonderful insights into colonialism, Confucianism and family politics. This is a humane, arch and beautifully-written piece of social and human analysis blended with touches of whimsy and magical realism.

Like Sun Wu Kong the famous Monkey King of "Journey to the West", Wallace uses his brains, sleight of hand and force of imagination to eventually pull success from the jaws of failure. However, the disturbing ending of the book points to deeper and darker forces at work within this sunny and good-humored tale.

Some people may have a problem with the "dialect" that Mo has his Cantonese-speaking characters use when they are speaking "Chinglish", personally I think it's a marvellous use of an artistic convention to confront speakers of standard English with the fact that local dialect adaptations of English (not elite-sanctioned text-book varieties) are the standard method of communication in many different places.

Despite the official pronouncements, this book is actually alive and well and available through the UK Amazon site. It is published by Mo's own Paddleless Press which he set up in 1995 after he sacked Random House as his publisher.

This story of a Cantonese family in Hong Kong is filled with warmth and humor. It tracks the relationship between Wallace, a clever young man of Portuguese-Cantonese descent, and the family's shrewd, miserly, tyrannical patriarch. Perhaps it's a bit of a fairy tale that works out too smoothly in the end. But Mo writes so well about families - and is so good at capturing the magic of people finding somewhat unexpectedly that they love each other - that it doesn't matter. The scenes between Wallace and his surprisingly resourceful wife May Ling -- and between Wallace and his beloved nephews -- are simply a joy to read.

I first read this novel, set in 1950's Hong Kong, while living in Hong Kong in the nineteen nineties - a cracking good read.
An eccentric Chinese family living in a crumbling, atmospheric town house (of the kind that has, alas, been utterly swept away by remorseless development) is slowly revealed to the reader in absorbing, fascinating detail. I was amazed, as a Hong Kong resident, at how many of the actions and attitudes of Mr Mo's fictional family were still to be encountered in nineteen nineties Hong Kong (and no doubt today). I felt I met these people, or observed them, many times while living there.
A sad, funny, ironic book that gains in strength by not becoming sentimental about Hong Kong, nor pulling any punches. Like other accurate reads about Hong Kong (such as Paul Theroux's Kowloon Tong - read it if you like this one), Monkey King tended to put a bee in the bonnet of some readers, chiefly those types so well-described by Mr Mo herein, and may be a painful read for some. But the detached reader has in store for him an excellent story, great characters and (an added plus) a book that is very informative about the Hong Kong of reality.

Timothy Mo, the twice Booker Prize nominated writer of part Chinese descent, writes with confidence and authority about the marriage of an outsider (Wallace) into a Cantonese family and his eventual acceptance by the patriach who breaks with tradition and hands the reins over to him when he dies. The first third of the novel is undeniably captivating and often hilarious in its authentic account of Chinese customs and beliefs and in its characterisation of the various members of the Poon family, from the loutish Ah Lung to the two unmarried sisters, the elder of whom makes a thunderous noise when she washes in the morning. Mabel is another unforgettable character. But as soon as Wallace and May Ling are packed off to Mainland China, the pace starts to slacken and I found myself quickly losing interest. Things didn't improve much even when the scene shifted back to Hong Kong for the final third of the novel. I found myself skimming the pages and looking forward to its end. It was a major source of irritation for me that Mo makes all his characters speak in the weirdest past tense, an attempt no doubt to capture in dialogue the ungrammatical English used by Hongkongers, but it only comes across as cute and condescending. "The Monkey King" reads like the real thing for the most part but is ultimately disappointing.