Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #233776 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Daily Mail
‘Beautifully imagined… An extremely elegant, as well as visually arresting, first novel.’

Rachel Hore, Guardian (Saturday Review)
‘A beautifully written elegy for a lost childhood.’

Synopsis
Two sisters grow together and apart into their emerging selves. Frankie pulses with curiosity and risk; Kate is watchful, all eyes and ears. Immersed in the heat and colours of Hong Kong in the 1960s, theirs is a world of fishermen and insurgents, temple gods and ghosts, of blinding light and dark, dark waters. As Frankie's behaviour becomes more and more outrageous, in her defiant attempt to win her parents' attention, Kate retreats into a quiet desperation, unable to act to save the one soul for whom she would sacrifice everything - Frankie.

Customer Reviews

Where's the story?
A wonderfully written book, the descriptions are such that you can literally smell the tiger balm and the josh sticks, you can almost feel the hot rain. The story is however decidedly lacking, nothing really happens. A good beach read.

You can feel it, taste it, smell it
A classic coming of age novel that comes with the added depth of a cultural menageree of smells and tastes described so well you can sense them on your lips and skin. However, in focusing on the rich descriptive aspects, the author fails to effectively build up a gripping storyline. Thus, when the slightly predictable culmination of the story occurs, you can't help but feel it came slightly abruptly. It was, nevertheless, a wonderful novel.