John Lanchester: Fragrant Harbour

By JANE WESTAWAY

No one can accuse John Lanchester of being predictable. His debut novel, The Debt to Pleasure, is narrated by a gourmet poisoner who raises pomposity and self-delusion to an art form more delectable than his cuisine. His second is a delightful day in the life of the eponymous Mr Phillips, a newly laid-off London accountant.

This third novel is about Hong Kong. It spans 70 years in the life of the seething city, and is narrated by three characters whose relationship to the place matters more to their creator than their individual and collective stories.

The book starts promisingly, with a 50-page potted autobiography from English journalist Dawn Stone, a rabidly 80s creature - slick, ambitious and selfish. You might not like her, but Lanchester has her to a T, so that by the time he gets her to Hong Kong, you're ready to enjoy it from her perspective.

Which is when the job of narration passes to Tom Stewart. He's an old man looking back on his early life in Kent, the voyage east and his crucial meeting with Sister Benedicta, a Chinese nun who teaches him Cantonese, his hotel career, the Japanese invasion, and his ultimate success as a Hong Kong hotel owner.

Tom Stewart's measured, 200-page story gives Lanchester the opportunity to deliver an overview of Hong Kong history, and is often interesting and informative. But it's also frustratingly impersonal, delivered by a narrator who never divulges his emotional life.

While Kazuo Ishiguro's butler, Stevens, is similarly repressed, this is the driving point of The Remains of the Day. Reading Fragrant Harbour, though, one comes to suspect Lanchester values Tom's reserve because it allows him to foreground the city itself, and not be distracted by more private matters. In any case, the revelation that comes near the end of Tom's section is accompanied by reader irritation, a sense of having missed the real story - his long and unusual relationship with Sister Benedicta.

The last 70 pages of the novel are narrated by Matthew Ho, and feature the reappearance of Dawn Stone. But since it's too late in the novel for us to want to get to know another major character, Ho remains merely another impersonal narrator.

Fragrant Harbour is not without interest or action. We get a broad-brush picture of Hong Kong's expat colonial past, the low-down on mission life and the Triads. An overseas reviewer dubbed the novel a love letter to Hong Kong, but while the city and its relationship with China clearly fascinate Lanchester, he doesn't come close enough to transferring this fascination to the reader.

With its three narrators and their private worlds subservient to his desire to portray an entire city, the novel feels more like documentary than fiction. The most memorable novels are, after all, like Lanchester's first two, love-letters to character.

* Published by Faber and Faber, $34.95

* Jane Westaway is a Wellington writer.