Fragrant Harbor

I had a tough time putting it down. The primary characters, the timeline, and the cultural insights so mesmerizing.

Although I'm admirer of John Lanchester's earlier and subsequent novels, I hadn't heard about "Fragrant Harbor" until recently, or known that Lanchester was born and brought up in Hong Kong. Because I was born there too, to an Anglo-Chinese family that arrived in the Colony in 1936, I can attest that the stories in it ring true. The novel begins with Dawn Stone, an English journalist who arrives in Hong Kong from London in the 1990's and soon shifts from journalism to managing the media empire of a Chinese billionaire named Wo. At that point "Fragrant Harbor" shifts to the story of Tom Stewart, a young man who sails from England to Hong Kong in 1935, improbably learns Cantonese from a Fujianese nun on the ship, lands a managerial job in a Hong Kong hotel, and finds success and happiness there until the Japanese invasion in 1941. After surviving internment at Stanley Prison, Stewart is repatriated to England but decides to return to Hong Kong, where he expands his hotel business and spends the rest of his life. The Dawn Stone section of the book ties into Tom's story only at the end, with the story of Matthew Ho, a young Hong Kong engineer/businessman with factories in China and Vietnam. Long and almost entirely expository, Matthew's section is much less interesting that Tom's, or for that matter Dawn's. Partly this because his story is about the air conditioner business, guanxi and the difficulties of doing business under Communist governments, but it's also because Matthew is a much less interesting person than Tom and Dawn. Although I recommend the novel to anyone who is interested in colonial Hong Kong, I think Tom's section is a novel in itself, and a much more compelling one than the sections that precede and follow it. My father, now 101, is only slightly younger than Tom would be if he were alive (and a real person); I am planning to read him that part only.

This is a well written and very interesting story. It was recommended by a friend who had lived in Hong Kong. I knew nothing about this time period or Hong Kong, so I found it historically interesting. The only weak part was the last section, where I felt like the author was having difficulty with the ending or that another writer finished the book. Still, it's worth reading.

On the whole, I enjoyed this book because I know Hong Kong well and his descriptions of places and events were spot on. However, as I found with the last Lanchester book I read (Capital), his female characters are a bit hollow. In this book, the former journalist Dawn didn't ring true at all. Lanchester holds the threads of a story together skillfully, but I found the ending of Fragrant Harbour a bit unsatisfactory with too many loose ends.

Very good perspective covering many years time span

Lanchester has written a book elegant and poignant, about a British ex-pat who spends his life in Hong Kong. Lanchester captures the sights, sounds, and indeed, smells of the city, and takes us through the pre-war years, the war, and the boom thereafter, up to the ceding of the territory to China. It has a love story, with unexpected consequences, most beneficial to the book's hero. Wonderful book, highly recommended.

Great writing. I give this book as a gift to friends

A deceptive beginning followed by an increasingly enthralling story. Accentuated by the fact that I read it while I was hiking with the most delightful man from Hong Kong. But even without that it was an enthralling read that breathed new life into what I thought was an old city.

I have never visited Hong Kong and don’t know much about life there, but this book gave a real flavour of what life was like there in the colonial era and now. The stories of 3 people are told separately and only towards the end is it clear how they are interlinked. I did not see coming the link between Tom and Matthew (I won’t say more as it would spoil the plot for those yet to read it) and this was the only part of the book that I thought was just a bit far-fetched. It is a really enjoyable read. It has a lot to say about the devotion to money and how this effects ethics and behaviour without moralising. I am astonished at the range of John Lanchester’s writing. I have read several of his books and they are all so completely different in style,tone, and subject.

I am only half-way through Fragrant Harbour and have enjoyed what I’ve read so far. It’s only my second John Lanchester novel, having recently completed his Capital, which I found difficult to put down. Capital is a brilliant read in my opinion, and I would recommend it highly. Perhaps I am less captivated by Fragrant Harbour because I am less familiar with Hong Kong than I am with London (the setting of Capital) where I lived for 11 years. Also, Fragrant Harbour spans a number of decades, which makes it somewhat difficult for me to ‘get into’. But I’m looking forward to seeing what lies ahead in the book! I love Lanchester’s writing style.

Not really sure about Fragrant Harbour. I have loved John Lanchester's apital and Mr Phillips, but they preserved a specific moment in time, shining a light on some of the grotesque people wo live in London.Fragrant Harbour is different. It is (mostly) set in Hong Kong, unfolds over the course of nearly a century, and has one central character. Perhaps it is because Hong Kong is less familiar than London, but it feels more two dimensional, especially in the earlier days.John Lanchester chooses to use four different narrators in very unequal sections. The vast majority is narrated by Tom Stewart, an Englishman who set off for Hong Kong between the wars. His English section, and the section on the ship out to Hong Kong work well. We see a young man having his eyes opened to the world; he meets new and very different people; he visits ports en route for parties; he ends up learning Chinese to help a nun win a bet with a businessman; and he develops a friendship with the captain. This seems to set the scene nicely for an interesting story.Unfortunately, Tom Stewart’s narrative goes on and on and on. It starts to become very confusing to follow who is who or why people are behaving as they are. The fog really sets in with the development of Traid gangs and the onset of the war – both of which could/should have been interesting but just seemed muddled. After the war, the narrative manages to hurtle through time at a rate of knots despite the pages of the novel seeming to pass at glacial speed. The pacing was way wrong. Ultimately, Tom Stewart didn’t seem to have the charisma for such a pivotal role. He was a man that things happened to; he was present through interesting times, and he became successful, but he was still an Everyman.The Stewart narrative is bookended by short narratives told, in the beginning, by Dawn Stone, an English journalist arriving in Hong Kong shortly before the 1997 handover, and at the end by Matthew Ho, a very rich and successful businessman with roots in China and Hong Kong. Both narratives are interesting from a story perspective, although Dawn Stone never quite manages to convince the reader she is female or real. She is able to shine a light on Asian business practices and does provide an opportunity for the novel, structurally, to come full circle. But she should have been more convincing.And in the middle, between Stewart and Ho, there is a very brief letter written by Sister Maria, the nun who had taught Stewart Chinese on the ship and whose life had interwoven with Stewart’s. It’s an odd thing, serving more as a plot device than the entrance of a new narrator. The letter gives little insight into Maria as a person, and even less into Stewart.The redeeming feature of the novel is the final, relatively short section narrated by Matthew Ho. Ho is a convincing multi-millionaire, ruthless but vulnerable. He works with and around the corruption that is rife as the world enters the Chinese Century. His humble roots allow him to understand Face, but his Western upbringing allow him to suppress his own shame. He is truly a product of Hong Kong, straddling the east and the west but always looking to the future and not the past. Without this section, the novel would have felt flat and clunky. With it, Fragrant Harbour leaves an impression of being better than it actually was.For the vast majority, Fragrant Harbour was a bit of a dull and uneven slog. It is an interesting departure for John Lanchester. Nobody wants a writer who always writes the same novel over and over again. Nevertheless, I can’t help hoping that, in the future, John Lanchester sticks to London and times he has lived through.

I have never been to Hong Kong so can't comment on its accuracy in that regard. However, it is a believable tale of how one or two quick decisions or encounters can shape your life. There is one plot twist that I found a little unbelievable but I won't spoil that for you.The spiel on the back of the book and the reviews shown there talk of corruption and corruptibility. I was reminded of a folk song which has the lines "by theft and murder they took the land, now everywhere the walls spring up at their command". In real life as in the book even if you know some organisation has evil at its root it can become difficult not to have contact with it as it becomes larger and more powerful. Others forget or never knew and you become isolated. Good read but if you were from another planet it wouldn't recommend the majority of humans to you.

A book that starts of gentle but full of unexpected twists and turns. Right up to near the end the story develops in interesting and unexpected ways. Spanning a good 50 years of Hong Kong history the novel has a compelling cast of characters and gives an interesting picture of how the territory has evolved during that time. I do not want to add any spoilers but a few times I found myself going back to earlier passages to reread them after revelations later in the book helped to show them in a different light. I have read four of John's books and in my opinion this is his best novel. Better than Capital and much better than Mr Phillips. The stories are interwoven in a similar way to in Capital and like in that book a seemingly scattered collection of stories come together nicely in the end. Part of the enjoyment of reading is to find out how and why. I also found that in the last chapter or two the hidden theme of the book emerged much to my interest and enjoyment.