FIVE STAR BILLIONAIRE by Tash Aw (Penguin), 379 pages, $30 cloth. Rating: NNN
Malaysia-bred, London, UK-based Tash Aw has a gift for character development that’s on full display in his new novel, Five Star Billionaire. Unfortunately, the narrative never really comes together.
Phoebe, who’s in Shanghai as an illegal from Malaysia, parlays a found I.D. card into a management job at a series of beauty spas. She’s cynical, but not as jaded as the people she encounters.
Yinghui is a successful businesswoman and spa owner, who wishes men weren’t intimidated by her success Gary, a former pop star, is brought down by the tab and Justin despises his wealthy family’s corrupt business dealings.
They’re all characters who wish they could shed their identity and become someone else. Were Aw less skilled at making their personalities shine, you wouldn’t become so seriously invested in their futures and so distressed that he loses his narrative focus.
Part of the problem is the shadowy figure of the titular billionaire, who appears in the third person but also tells his own story in short sequences interspersed throughout the novel. Though the book purports to describe his rise to power, it’s never clear how he got his money.
It’s obvious, too, that in trying to weave the strands of the story together, Aw has moved material around. There’s some unnecessary repetition, and the narrative goes back and forth in time confusingly.
As in his previous novel Map Of The Invisible World, however, there are some brilliant set pieces. A sequence in which Gary tries to make a comeback singing in malls is heartbreaking. And Aw has an unerring eye for human hypocrisy. The fundamental injustice suffered by Justin, seen as a capitalist lackey while his brother gets off easy as a trust-fund artist, is infuriating.
It’s just too bad that Aw fails to tie up his threads into a satisfying whole.
susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole
