A review by indoorg1rl
The Whitewash by Siang Lu

5.0

It sounded like a good idea at the time- A Hollywood spy thriller, starring, for the first time in history, an Asian male lead. With an estimated $350 million production budget and up-and-coming Hong Kong actor JK Jr, who, let's be honest, is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but probably the hottest, Brood Empire was basically a sure thing. Until it wasn't.

This book was nothing like anything I’d read before. After loving Ghost Cities, I just had to check out this book, especially when I realised this was where Baby Bao made his first appearance!

As someone who’s more into plot-driven stories, I never thought I’d love a very character-driven, relatively-thin-on-plot, told-in-interview-snippets book like this. But I did. This book pretty much covered my entire childhood’s experience of watching Asian action movies by popular Hongkong actors in the 80s and 90s. I felt seen! Also, who would’ve thought I’d need a historical lesson of whitewashing events through the decades.

I listened to the audiobook which won the ABIA 2023 Audiobook of the Year award, and deservedly so as it was a fantastic production. The (mostly Asian) casts were top notch and the attention to details (including the creation of yee-haw theme song specifically for the audiobook) was top quality - a very good reflection on Siang Lu’s meticulousness, I’d say.

If you’re into fresh, unique, bizarre storytelling, I’d implore you to read this (or anything by Siang Lu).