|
| Gweilo: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood | 
 enlarge | Author: Martin Booth
Publisher: Bantam Books
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £0.99
You Save: £7.00 (88%)
New (17) from £3.03
Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 54524
Media: Paperback
Pages: 269
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1
ISBN: 0553816721
EAN: 9780553816723
ASIN: 0553816721
Publication Date: August 1, 2005
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 delightful, a joy to read April 14, 2008
this book details life for the author and his parents during difficult times, amusing in places, a lot of Hong Kong history worth remembering, although some is best forgotten, shocking almost, but at least the author tells it like it was.
A beautiful portrait of a boy, his mother and the place they both loved February 3, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This delightful memoir is doubtless mainly of interest to people who know Hong Kong and want to know about, or remember, the very different Hong Kong that existed in the early 1950s. But it also stands on its own as a very touching piece of writing about childhood, a portrait of a feisty, loving mother, and an intimate gift by a man on his deathbed to his children. Martin Booth wrote this because he knew he was dying and because he was sad that his own father had never told him anything of his boyhood. In fact, after reading Gweilo, one's picture of Booth Sr is one of such a grotesque and narrow-minded philistine that it is hardly a surprise to hear he never sat down with his son and related the stories of his early life.
Gweilo is the story of the author's adventures in Hong Kong as a child, between the ages of seven and nine. It contains nothing about young Martin going to school, but describes instead his adventures and discoveries and the people and places he encountered, from coolie rickshaw drivers to the disturbed demobbed British officer Nagasaki Jim (presumably the model for Booth's 1985 novel Hiroshima Joe), with gangsters, cooks, colonials and lepers all thrown into the mix. Young Martin was an explorer and a curious child, but distinguished himself from the likes of his awful father by learning some Cantonese and seeing ordinary Chinese as real people rather than soul-less colonial subjects. Martin (and to some extent his mother) was open to trying almost anything new and always poking his nose into other people's business. The result is an often hilarious series of adventures, gathered into a rare and affectionate portrait of the lives of Hong Kongers of the time.
If you know the modern Hong Kong, it is intriguing to see just how much has changed, and how little. The place is physically unrecognisable, and sovereignty has passed from colonial Britain to Communist China. Beyond my laptop screen, the sun struggles to conquer a forest of skyscrapers and a mist of pollution. But Gweilo still rings many bells and the characters from the book still haunt Hong Kong, and at street level much remains the same.
It would be easy to carp that the author could not possibly have remembered all his young adventures in such detail, and to suspect that he embellished a few things, filled in gaps here and there and left out details he preferred to forget. But that would be mean-spirited, because this is the book he wanted to leave to his children to tell them of his early life, so although he has recreated a lost world, it must be as true as he could make it. This heartfelt tribute to old Hong Kong is his legacy.
 not his best October 24, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have always enjoyed Booth's writing, and the period he writes about here is fascinating, and as always he picks out detail that seem to hold the imagination and evoke the picture, but this sometimes appears like 'Oedipus meest the cliched Hong Kong guide' with a bit of pidgin English thrown in
 Poignant read September 2, 2006
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is a fine book. Charming and informative but so very poignant. First there is the knowledge that the writer is dying as he looks back and recounts an extraordinary 3 years in his childhood in a Hong Kong that he in his mind 'has never really left'. Second, there is the poignancy of a dying marriage between 2 wholly incompatible individuals. Third is the feeling that the young Booth's Hong Kong is also largely gone - displaced by financial wealth and frenetic construction, the development of the New Territories and the departure of the British.
One is left with lots of questions and a real desire to read a sequel that will never come. How did the return to Hong Kong go ? How did the marriage survive ? Was the contrasting description of mother and father really fair ? To what degree did Booth put his adult opinions and subsequent experiences into the thoughts of an apparently very precocious 7 to 10 year old boy ?
Overall then, a great read for anyone who loves nostalgia and poignancy, history and geography and keen observation of human behaviour and especially for anyone who has visited or lived in Hong Kong and been fascinated by this remarkable place.
This is an excellent book July 27, 2006
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
In `Gweilo' Martin Booth describes his life in Hong Kong from 1952 to 1955. I loved roaming around with Booth through the streets of Kowloon and the Walled City - which I didn't visit until shortly before it was torn down - and the various bits of Hong Kong Island. A seven-year old would presumably never be allowed to roam around like this in Europe. But as Booth notes in the beginning in Hong Kong he was very much treated as an `adult in training', which I think puts a much fairer value on what is called `childhood'.
I loved the many anecdotes in the book including the one where Booth describes their hiking tour to Ngong Ping Monastery on Lantau Island and being awoken by the sound of castanets, which turned out to be a pair of clapping teeth (his father's).
The one ugly character in the book is indeed Booth's father. The guy has a rather large chip on his shoulder and he comes over like the big ugly Expat - Hong Kong has seen a few of those in its time. One shudders knowing that the guy came back in 1959 as a civil servant.
It is a pity that Booth's untimely death deprives us of a memoir of his second stay in Hong Kong, but I would not have been at all surprised if it would have been as marvelous as `Gweilo'.
|
|
|
Learn how to have your own
Amazon Shop
Travel Maps and Guides
zeugma
| | Holiday Travel |
alpharooms.com for cheap holiday deals in spain and worldwide
Disneyland Paris for a great family holiday or short break.
Holday Cottages throughout Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland and France with Cottages4you
Hilton - need we say more, you will find Hilton Hotels in most areas throughout Britain, in cities and in the countryside.
Don't forget Travel Insurance
Airport Parking
|
|
|
|
