A review by siria
The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw

3.0

The Harmony Silk Factory starts out very well, and Aw's crisp prose made the first of the book's three sections hum along. I was really intrigued by its setting, about which I know little—Malaysia during and after the Second World War. I was alternately engrossed and enraged by it—the book is a page turner, but I had predicted the denouement before I'd met half of the characters and there are some very clichéd elements here. I found the second section melodramatic, and the protagonist of the third section I didn't believe in as a real person. As a first novel, this really is very good, but I enjoyed Harmony Silk Factory more for the promise Aw shows as a developing writer than for the book as a self-contained entity.