The Harmony Silk Factory

By Tash Aw...this was recommended to me by a library patron, in fact she gave me her own copy so I could read it.

From the Publishers Weekly review
Aw slices his first novel into three segments, wherein three characters dissect the nature of Johnny Lim, a controversial figure in 1940s Malaysia. Depending on the teller, Johnny was a Communist leader, an informer for the Japanese, a dangerous black-market trader, a working-class Chinese man too in awe of his aristocratic wife to have sex with her, or a loyal friend. Long after Johnny's death, we hear these conflicting accounts from his grown son, Jasper; his wife, Snow (through the lens of her 1941 diary); and his English expatriate friend, Peter Wormwood. The chief benefit of this structural trick is to make palpable the limitations of each character's perspective, and that's no mean feat. But Aw's prose, though often witty and taut, is not equally convincing in all its guises. Jasper is the typical alienated son who burns to discover all the crimes his father committed; this also makes him the typical unreliable narrator (when his father kills a mosquito that had bitten him, Jasper cites this as proof of an innate "streak of malice"). When Snow takes over, Johnny suddenly resembles a more ordinary man, while she—adored by her son, whose birth caused her death—reveals herself to be a fallible character and an unfaithful wife. The most boisterous and enjoyable thread of this story belongs to Peter, with whose chipper English patter Aw, oddly enough, seems most at home.

I haven't been able to put it down. I normally read more than one book at a time...well I have only read magazines while reading this book. You are introduced to the main character Johnny, and honestly you are not sure whether to like him, hate him, admire him, or what...he works his way up from nothing and makes something of himself in Malaysia. The book isn't written from his point of view, but from the people he meets, Peter and Snow and his son, Jasper. He makes friends, enemies and gets married along the way. I don't want to give anything away...but the history is interesting and the characters are well developed. And...through all of the book you really aren't sure what to think of Johnny. I would definitely recommend this book.