This witty debut by London-based author Naoise Dolan has as its inimitable protagonist, Ava, a 22-year-old Irish woman teaching English in Hong Kong. The crowded city’s multicultural environment is evident through the mix of various languages spoken there—Cantonese, Mandarin and English. Her job at the TEFL school, where she takes weekly grammar classes, involves correcting rich local children’s phrases of Hong Kong English into correct English.
Being lonely in the city, Ava finds a friend in Julian, a banker from London who studied history at Oxford. He has a six-figure salary, and Ava is impressed that he is “British posh”. She hopes his company makes her smarter so that she can talk about currencies and indices with serious people. Julian lets Ava move into his guest room, and after a few months, they hook up. His friends are rich like him and different from Ava. Julian enjoys Ava’s company but she finds that he doesn’t exactly love her. “We were the sum of the routines we’d built around each other” is how she aptly explains their complex relationship.
Julian goes for work to London for a few months, leaving Ava on her own for a while. Enter Edith, a girl who belongs to Hong Kong and is Ava’s age. A rich solicitor who works at a law firm, Edith reminds Ava of Julian in many ways, and she constantly compares them in her head. One of the things that draws Ava to Edith is her penchant for frivolous things, unlike Julian. Their relationship soon becomes physical, and she feels comfortable being intimate with her. Even while both of them declare their love for each other, Ava keeps in touch with Julian while he is away travelling and continues meeting his father. She sometimes feels that manipulation is a part of her character, and that she is living a double life.
When Julian returns to Hong Kong after almost six months, things get more complicated for Ava and she is forced to make a choice. A twist in the tale gets her to fight and break up with Edith—partly because she feels Edith has too much power to hurt her—as opposed to Julian who doesn’t. It also makes her ponder about forbidden love—‘an accusation’ for LGBT people like herself—whose first memories of love are bound up with first memories of being hated, making it hard for her to love anyone. When Julian’s bank decides to move him to Frankfurt, he asks her to come along and she agrees. The book’s last scene has Ava going to meet Edith to say goodbye before she leaves Hong Kong.
The book’s short and snappy chapters provide an interesting peek into the confusing, modern love lives of young expats living abroad. Like most millenials, Ava turns to Google search and Instagram feeds for most things that she wants to research. The idiosyncrasies of its quirky characters grow on you with every passing page. Further, vivid depictions of Hong Kong’s streets and restaurants as well as its class divide remind one most recently of Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians.
Like most millenials, Ava turns to Google and Instagram for things that she wants to research. The idiosyncrasies of its quirky characters grow on you with each page.