Monday, October 22, 2018

This Quintessence of Dust, by Marshall Moore

"This Quintessence of Dust," by Marshall Moore, in Hong Kong Noir, edited by Jason Y. Ng and Susan Blumberg-Kason, Akashic Press, 2018.

I should say I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.  Thanks much.

Some stories start off so strongly that I am rooting for them.  This one started so slowly I didn't really expect it to go anywhere.  Obviously I was wrong.

The narrator is a Hong Kong native, a gay man, who has just returned after breaking up with his lover in England.  Something else happened back there, something bad, but we won't get the details for a while.

He is living on Cheung Chau, a small island off the main part of Hong Kong.  For some reason a lot of people go there to die.  His parents have made a lot of money investing in the resulting depressed prices: "Investing in Suicide Island took a certain sangfroid unique to the Chinese. [Mom] was a bank manager.  Death could be lucrative."

Then there are his two uncles who are doing well, but the source of whose money is not clear.  And a young woman he meets drowns herself.

How does all this connect to our protagonist, and his very much alive ex-lover back in Britain?  All shall be revealed and it shall be surprising...


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