Kevin Kwan’s trilogy of life on the superfast lane of Singapore’s beautiful ethnic people (read Chinese of different vintage) comes to a slam-bam-thank you-Kwan conclusion in this last book. As bar-hoppers will know, a Sling consists of equal parts of gin, cherry brandy, lime and grenadine syrup, maybe a dash of pineapple juice and lashings of soda and ice. Kwan writes as if scripting a storyline for an Asiatic version of ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ with inputs from Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor and a squirt of The Far Pavilions where even our very own Shahrukh Khan gets a walk-on part that is only very slightly insulting.
In this last book, Kwan provides the family trees of three of the main dynasties that are entwined by greed and the orgasmic need for dominance. It could also be called survival. Each one of the main players is defined by his or her loyalty to Shang Su Yi, the chatelaine of a fabulously gothic estate named Tyersall Park.
She represents old money, or the traditional Chinese way of holding the family together. She is an empress of the new world where Singapore, we are subtly tutored into accepting, is a born-again dragon kingdom.
Breathless ramble
Su Yi may be dying, but the rituals devoted to her demise and subsequent funeral are detailed to maximum effect. There are also hilarious touches as, for instance, a description of a black South Sea Islands pearl that is kept between the dead woman’s teeth as she lies in state and which the women in the family try to retrieve with disastrous consequences.
It’s a brand-friendly universe where every bit of clothing and accessory, every cup of coffee, cocktail, scrambled eggs for breakfast, not to mention the linen, the cutlery, the crockery and designer centrepiece of especially chosen flowers, is itemised and inventoried by Kwan’s perfectly pitched ear for affluence. Though he provides copious notes on almost every page to ratify the inner life of some of these items, it’s a pity he has not added a proper list at the end of the book that could have alerted the aspirational reader to the huge variety of brand names.
For instance, there is a type of decorative fish that one of his characters collects—Arowana—that is so ridiculously expensive it has to be housed in a 200 gallon fish tank. Or as Kwan notes: “No wonder lovers of this fish are willing to shell out thousands to get their precious pets eye lifts, fin tucks, or chin jobs. No word on arowana Botox yet, but that can’t be far behind.”
Kwan, who is Singapore born but bred in New York’s West Village since 1995, might fancy himself the Truman Capote of the East, dishing out breakfasts in the style of Tiffany’s, while stirring his egg fuyongs and Laksa. Unlike Capote, who kept to a tiny set of habitués that he observed with a finely-pointed stiletto, Kwan roams pretty much all over South Asia.
He’s like a tour guide who dashes off on a breathless ramble from Chiang Mai to Manila and everywhere in between, while ensuring that his characters, mostly gorgeously endowed women, have enough time to make out with their significantly wealthy others. As Capote observed: “All literature is gossip.” Kwan takes gossip to the level of a tree walk over a tangled tropical jungle.
Chinese shakers and makers
For those of us who were brought up to spend a romantic afternoon in the tea-room of the Peninsula in Hong Kong contemplating the tragic inter-racial love affairs in films such as The World of Suzie Wong or Love is a Many Splendored Thing , with the dishy William Holden and Nancy Kwan; or The Wind Cannot Read ( very much like today’s Rangoon) with Dirk Bogarde, while eating thin cucumber sandwiches, not encountering a single white male is something of a shock. There is one English lord who is saving orangutans in Sumatra, but he has only a minor role.
That may be Kevin Kwan’s biggest coup. He’s written a book, or three of them, where all the shakers and makers of his world are Chinese! It’s enough to make the rest of us feel both stirred and shaken.
The author is a Chennai-based writer and critic.
