Memories of expat life in pre-handover Hong Kong

Lyrical, wry, amusing, deceptively gentle, Simon Barnes’s second novel packs a powerful punch after it has crept up on the reader with the narrator’s fond reminiscences of expat life in pre-handover Hong Kong. The hazy and often hilarious memories of work and play in the heartstopping beauty and pulse-racing commercialism of the colony is suddenly flooded by darker memories of tragedy and loss, although Barnes, the most optimistic and delightful of authors, pulls the reader through to a warmly satisfying conclusion.