Tash Aw's "Five Star Billionaire"

You can sympathize with Phoebe the factory girl, Gary the pop star, Justin the family heir, Yinghui the entrepreneur, and Walter the titular five-star billionaire because they are people, and we are all taught to be sympathetic to the plight of others, but as characters, none of them rise above one dimension. Any attempt at complication, for instance, Yinghui's change from leftist activist to successful businesswoman, is unconvincing. The most interesting character is, actually, a minor one, Justin's younger brother, a half-cynical, half-naive aesthete., drawn with a few deft strokes. The problem lies in the prose, I think, which is serviceable, but lackluster. If there is no spark of life in the characters, there is also no spark of life in the setting, the many descriptions of Shanghai. The prose does not convince me that skyscrapers have different personalities. And the plot twist could be sighted from a mile away. Maybe I should have started with The Harmony Silk Factory instead.

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