KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL by Anthony Bourdain



THE GIST:

A celebrity chef shares the inside scoop on the bad old days of the New York City restaurant scene.

THE VERDICT:

KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL is just fun to read. Bourdain tells stories about his life behind the culinary scenes, and what he reveals is surprising. He describes the heady, unhealthy life in a professional kitchen that mostly revolves around sex, drugs, and food (not necessarily in that order).

The fast-paced, dangerous work environment is home to what Bourdain describes as the rejects of society: high school dropouts, alcoholics, illegal immigrants, and anyone else who is willing to do the work, obey the chef, and not complain about burns and bad manners. Such an environment provides ample material for Bourdain’s vibrant storytelling.

Bourdain’s prose is sharp and conversational. He plays around with words with dry humor and a worldly air. He includes plenty of mouth-watering descriptions of food, in addition to shocking revelations about the standard practices of a busy professional kitchen.

THE LINK:

Anthony Bourdain’s website

THE COST:

Currently listed at $10.35 for the Kindle edition. I think I paid less than this when I bought it a few months ago.

THE QUESTION:

What is the most difficult work environment you have encountered? How did you handle it?

Bookspotting: Week 9

Thank you to everyone who has been reporting the books they see in the comments on these posts. It's so interesting to see what people are reading around the world. This week I spotted a book with the word "blood" on the cover, but I couldn't see the rest of the title. There was a woman carrying The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown in Central, and another reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel on the MTR. I spotted four Chinese books and two Kindles, one of them in the hands of my friend from home who is visiting this week. We spent Saturday on Lamma Island and were pleased to see a shop with boxes of used books for sale out front.

What are people reading in your town this week?

RHUBARB by Craig Silvey

THE GIST:

A blind girl and a reclusive boy connect and learn to heal from personal trauma over cello music and rhubarb.

THE VERDICT:

This is a sweet, sad, but ultimately uplifting story about the aftermath of tragedy for two young people. They are each stunted in some way by their experiences, and they struggle with the insomnia and ignominy of memory.

At its heart, this is a love story. Silvey explores themes of loss, betrayal, healing, music, and family. He includes many funny moments and a few very memorable characters. He uses animals (a guide dog, two possums, a hermit crab) to personify and enrich the lonely worlds of Eleanor and Ewan.

The style of this little novel is lyrical and poetic, full of repetition and alliteration. Silvey has a unique way of using words to create images and emotions that are original and endearing. His very vocabulary makes you think, and it makes you want to keep reading.

THE LINK:

This is Craig Silvey’s website

This is my account of Craig’s event at the HK literary festival

THE COST:

I bought the paperback edition at the literary festival event and it was expensive (really expensive). The book was imported from Australia and it is not available on Kindle (yet).

THE QUESTION:

Do you think we need to connect with other people in order to overcome grief, or can we heal in solitude?

FACTORY GIRLS by Leslie T. Chang



THE GIST:

A journalist spends a few years following young migrant workers in one of China's booming factory towns, telling the story of their lives as it happens.

THE VERDICT:

This is a fascinating chronicle of a unique generation in China. Leslie Chang explores the lives of young women who leave their rural villages to work in the big city. From as young as 16 they must learn to survive and create their own luck in a rapidly changing country. She also tells of her own family's history in China and how they became migrants to America.

Chang's research took her into the factories, dormitories and social lives of her subjects, and she even traveled home with them to their villages during Chinese New Year. These women have unprecedented indepedence, and take on leading roles when they send money home and become the highest earners in their families. They do not always stay in the factories, and Chang watched as they pursued futher education with the goal of becoming clerks, speakers of Cantonese and English, receptionists, and even health supplement saleswomen.

Chang's primary aim was to tell the real, personal stories of the Chinese industrial machine, rather than focusing on factory conditions and injustices. Her book reminded me of The Jungle in that it put a human face on factory life. She writes of the incredible drive and determination of these young women who are doing what no one else in previous generations has done before.

THE LINK:

This is my account of Leslie Chang's lecture at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival. This is her Random House profile.

THE COST:

$10.99 for the Kindle edition

THE QUESTION:

What do you think about Chang's method of writing her story in reverse?

Bookspotting: Week 8

During the final few days of the Hong Kong Literary Festival I saw plenty of books at the events, and I saw a lot of books around town, too. After meeting so many inspiring writers I spent a lot of the weekend writing. There were people reading in the coffee shops where I sat with my laptop and my copy of Rhubarb. There were people reading at bus stops and even in the cinema, but it was hard to see the titles. I saw a schoolgirl reading Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami on the MTR. I saw someone else reading a book called December. I counted just two Chinese books in people's hands this week, plus two graphic novels and a few textbooks.

What are people reading in your town this weekend?

HKILF: Man Asian Literary Prize

The Hong Kong International Literary Festival occurs in connection with the Man Asian Literary Prize. This is a relatively new award in the tradition of the Man Booker Prize. Since 2007 it has been given for a work of fiction by an Asian author that is either written in English or translated into English. The winner receives $30,000 US and the translator, if any, receives $5,000 US.

The Literary Festival and the Man Asian Literary Prize hosted a joint event on Wednesday night at the Kee Club in Central for the five short-listed authors and their translators. The two Japanese authors, Kenzaburo Oe and Yoko Ogawa, were unable to attend, but their translators were present, along with the other three authors: Manu Joseph and Tabish Khair from India and Bi Feiyu from China. Each author read a portion from their book and answered questions from the audience. Bi Feiyu and his translator were both present, so they read in both English and Chinese.

My job was to take tickets at the door with volunteers from the Literary Prize’s office. There were members of the press and VIPs in attendance, along with guests who had purchased tickets through the literary festival. The reading was intimate; the guests sat around low tables in the posh bar area of the Kee Club and enjoyed glasses of wine, and the authors sat in the front under atmospheric lighting. From my post in the back of the room I couldn't hear the readings very well, but the low murmuring was punctuated by moments of beauty.

There were quite a few questions for the translators about the challenge of finding a unique English voice for the authors. Someone asked Bi Feiyu whether he ever feels that there are topics he cannot write about in China. He said he writes about whatever he wants. Others asked the two Indian authors, whose books are written in English, about their motivation and inspirations. Manu Joseph was particularly engaging, and he talked about being approached as a magazine editor by parents who think their children are geniuses. This inspired him to write SERIOUS MEN about a father who develops an elaborate fiction around his “genius” ten-year-old son.

The Man Asian Literary Prize was awarded at a private dinner on Thursday night. Bi Feiyu from China took home the award for his book THREE SISTERS, a story of the three women who live through the Cultural Revolution and face a changing and developing China. His two translators, Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin shared the $5,000 prize (source: www.manasianliteraryprize.org).

The Hong Kong International Literary Festival concludes with the closing party at The Pawn in Wanchai tonight. Do stop by if you are in Hong Kong! I’ll share closing thoughts on the Festival this weekend. Look for more reviews of the books featured in the Literary Festival over the past ten days.

HKILF: Brian Castro and Xu Xi



On Tuesday the Hong Kong International Literary Festival program included simultaneous events at the Central Library. I was responsible for picking up noted author Brian Castro whose session was about his book: SHANGHAI DANCING. I bounced back and forth between his event and the one next door in which Hong Kong author Xu Xi talked about her latest book: HABIT OF A FOREIGN SKY.

Shanghai Dancing: Truth or Fiction? with Brian Castro

Brian Castro was soft-spoken and kind. He looked the part of a university professor, and his talk had a bit of a lecturing feel. His book is a “fictional autobiography” about a journey through Shanghai, Macau, and his father’s life. He read passages from the book to demonstrate its stream of consciousness style, and this sentence stood out to me: “I packed a suitcase and walked out of my life forever.”

Castro spoke about the divide between truth and fiction, and what it was like for him to question and ignore the boundaries between the two in his book. He wanted to do something that no one has done before. He explored unreliable narration as he wove his story through different threads, and used photos to both add and take away the truth from the fiction. He said he needed to work through things that he had heard and misheard as a child, and writing a fictional autobiography allowed him to do this.

Castro wrote this book in an effort to do something completely new. He talked about how publishers were hesitant to take on his book because it did not fit easily into a box, and he argued that publishers do not know how to read literature anymore. James Joyce heavily influenced him, and his book bears a strong resemblance to ULYSSES. He described his work as similar to Joyce in that he too wanted to make a difficult journey in literature and tell his story in a purely original way.

Habit of a Foreign Sky with Xu Xi

Xu Xi is also a university professor, and she is currently the writer-in-residence for the MFA in Creative Writing at City University of Hong Kong. She is a dynamic speaker and a dramatic reader. She spoke of her love for Emily Dickinson and quoted the poem from which she drew the title for HABIT OF A FOREIGN SKY. She read sections from the book and talked about the moments that form her characters.

The main character in HABIT OF A FOREIGN SKY is a Eurasian woman in Hong Kong. Xu Xi talked about the challenge of being comfortable in your own skin and addressed the feminist themes in the book. She believes that with the rapid changes in the world we are poised to see something we haven’t seen before. She is encouraged to find women everywhere able to do just about anything they want. At the same time she said she is confused by the return of stiletto heels (which she described as foot-binding by choice) and the way women choose to behave in a world where they can do anything (think Real Desperate Housewives and their ilk).

Xu Xi spoke about her characters as living, breathing people. She talked about how some of them follow her around from book to book. They catch her attention and come back when she doesn’t expect them. They get under her skin and hang around until she has done their stories justice. She has a living relationship with her craft, and she is clearly passionate about her work.