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skconaghan 's review for:
Noble House
by James Clavell
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
If you don’t like socio-political international intrigue with high action, complex characters and plot twists the world never expected—stay away from James Clavell’s Hong Kong novels of Tai-Pan, Gai-Jin, and Noble House (with the war-time edition of King Rat containing related material and some same characters, despite being set elsewhere).
Of course, if you’re like me, DIVE IN. I ate these up!
It’s all political action and Cold War spy craft in these 1116 pages, but Clavell allows for a bit of relationship, revelry, romping, and even a touch of romance here, too. Nothing like the intense heart-breakers he weaved in Shōgun and Tai-Pan, but it’s tucked lightly between the rest of all these dialogues laden with economic jargon and the self-preserving power-struggle present in the expanding tapestry of interior monologues.
I love Clavell’s writing. He does his best to think and feel like each and every one of the characters he’s created, getting under their skin and into their culture, feeling their gender, their age, and foraging beneath the deep-set traumas that have shaped their lifestyles and philosophies and practices. In this way, he always assumes much—much more than some might appreciate—but he does it so honestly and as much without bias as possible. His racing narrative is a fresh break for me from the restrained and vapid contemporary language of ‘new’ Westernised 21st CE literature; from the latest (immensely necessary) academic additions to history revision; and from the thick, emotion-heavy vocabulary of my beloved classics. I love all those genres, but sometimes, you just need an escapist trip through time and culture to the world of James Clavell’s Asia.
Clavell is a thoughts-and-motives ninja; he delves past appearances into the darkest corners of everyone’s thinking, often culturally motivated, and produces a truly vast global cast of complex people. He presents socio-political and economic issues of the Cold War world from the platform of Hong Kong in the mid-60s through the intertwined lives of his expansive pool of characters.
And true to his nature (and as true to historical events as he can get), he drops everyone in grave danger near the end in a race to the finish —you never know who will survive.
Of course, if you’re like me, DIVE IN. I ate these up!
It’s all political action and Cold War spy craft in these 1116 pages, but Clavell allows for a bit of relationship, revelry, romping, and even a touch of romance here, too. Nothing like the intense heart-breakers he weaved in Shōgun and Tai-Pan, but it’s tucked lightly between the rest of all these dialogues laden with economic jargon and the self-preserving power-struggle present in the expanding tapestry of interior monologues.
I love Clavell’s writing. He does his best to think and feel like each and every one of the characters he’s created, getting under their skin and into their culture, feeling their gender, their age, and foraging beneath the deep-set traumas that have shaped their lifestyles and philosophies and practices. In this way, he always assumes much—much more than some might appreciate—but he does it so honestly and as much without bias as possible. His racing narrative is a fresh break for me from the restrained and vapid contemporary language of ‘new’ Westernised 21st CE literature; from the latest (immensely necessary) academic additions to history revision; and from the thick, emotion-heavy vocabulary of my beloved classics. I love all those genres, but sometimes, you just need an escapist trip through time and culture to the world of James Clavell’s Asia.
Clavell is a thoughts-and-motives ninja; he delves past appearances into the darkest corners of everyone’s thinking, often culturally motivated, and produces a truly vast global cast of complex people. He presents socio-political and economic issues of the Cold War world from the platform of Hong Kong in the mid-60s through the intertwined lives of his expansive pool of characters.
And true to his nature (and as true to historical events as he can get), he drops everyone in grave danger near the end in a race to the finish —you never know who will survive.