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Product Description
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"poetic... engaging... full of witty observations, dialogue and characterisations"
--Bookmunch
--Bookmunch
Book Description
A distinguished Burmese novelist joins the Chatto list with the story of a startlingly original homecoming.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Na Ga finds herself in Wanting, on the China / Burma border where her former American boyfriend has arranged for her to cross the border to her native Burma. Exposing aspects of Southeast Asia that are not normally seen by Westerners, encompassing rural Burma, Rangoon, northern China, the brothels of northern Thailand and Bangkok, the book relates her difficult life and is ultimately about acceptance and forgiveness. It's beautiful, sad and uplifting all at the same time.
We first meet Na Ga in her hotel room in Wanting, on the Chinese side of the border with Na Ga's native Burma (or Myanmar for the more geographically pedantic, although Burma is used throughout this book). She is attempting to commit suicide, but is interrupted by news from the hotel receptionist who tells her that her guide across the border, Mr Jiang, has just committed suicide himself. You might by now have the impression that this is not a cheery kind of book, and you'd be right up to a point, although it's certainly not without its light touches. In fact it's often quite beautiful, which makes the exposure of the seedier side so much more shocking.
Na Ga is in Wanting because her American lover has left her to return to the US, but he has arranged for her to be accompanied back `home'. But Na Ga doesn't want to go home - wherever that might be. And this is typical of her life. She doesn't like choice and has her life tends to be determined by others' wishes and actions. And what a life it has been. Law-Yone writes vividly about village life in Burma, an ex-pat life in Rangoon, as well as stints in a Thai brothel and the hedonism of Bangkok with her American lover, as Na Ga recalls what has happened to her since she was sold from her home village.
Born in Mandalay, raised in Rangoon, a US citizen now living in the UK, Burmese writer Wendy Law-Yone is the author of the critically acclaimed novels, The Coffin Tree and Irrawaddy Tango. Her themes tend to be about displacement, cultural issues of colonialism, migration, and political upheaval. Law-Yone's fiction sheds light not only on the Southeast Asian experience, but on issues of immigration and acculturation, often casting light on the darker side of the stories. The Road to Wanting is in much the same vein as her two previous novels and, I would suggest, deserves to receive similar critical praise.
We know from the cover blurb that at some point poor Na Ga, who is a charmingly written character, will end up in the seedier side of Thailand, but such is the naive charm and beauty of her character told in flashback, that I cannot ever remember being more affected by the brutality and cruelty of the sex slave industry. Of course, we all know it's wrong, but when you have become engrossed in the character of such a sweet person as Na Ga for a hundred or so pages, the shock is palpable. And a word of warning, there are some fairly explicit passages.
Although relatively short, The Road to Wanting is one of those books that you look back on and wonder how so much has happened in such a few pages. I think the last book that made me want to reach into its pages and rescue the main character to quite this extent was Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Although Na Ga might be too passive for some, it's her ability to forgive that is so powerful. She's a character that will stay with me for a long time.
Does she decide to get out of Wanting and cross the border in the end? Well, you'll just have to read it to find out. Very highly recommended.
We first meet Na Ga in her hotel room in Wanting, on the Chinese side of the border with Na Ga's native Burma (or Myanmar for the more geographically pedantic, although Burma is used throughout this book). She is attempting to commit suicide, but is interrupted by news from the hotel receptionist who tells her that her guide across the border, Mr Jiang, has just committed suicide himself. You might by now have the impression that this is not a cheery kind of book, and you'd be right up to a point, although it's certainly not without its light touches. In fact it's often quite beautiful, which makes the exposure of the seedier side so much more shocking.
Na Ga is in Wanting because her American lover has left her to return to the US, but he has arranged for her to be accompanied back `home'. But Na Ga doesn't want to go home - wherever that might be. And this is typical of her life. She doesn't like choice and has her life tends to be determined by others' wishes and actions. And what a life it has been. Law-Yone writes vividly about village life in Burma, an ex-pat life in Rangoon, as well as stints in a Thai brothel and the hedonism of Bangkok with her American lover, as Na Ga recalls what has happened to her since she was sold from her home village.
Born in Mandalay, raised in Rangoon, a US citizen now living in the UK, Burmese writer Wendy Law-Yone is the author of the critically acclaimed novels, The Coffin Tree and Irrawaddy Tango. Her themes tend to be about displacement, cultural issues of colonialism, migration, and political upheaval. Law-Yone's fiction sheds light not only on the Southeast Asian experience, but on issues of immigration and acculturation, often casting light on the darker side of the stories. The Road to Wanting is in much the same vein as her two previous novels and, I would suggest, deserves to receive similar critical praise.
We know from the cover blurb that at some point poor Na Ga, who is a charmingly written character, will end up in the seedier side of Thailand, but such is the naive charm and beauty of her character told in flashback, that I cannot ever remember being more affected by the brutality and cruelty of the sex slave industry. Of course, we all know it's wrong, but when you have become engrossed in the character of such a sweet person as Na Ga for a hundred or so pages, the shock is palpable. And a word of warning, there are some fairly explicit passages.
Although relatively short, The Road to Wanting is one of those books that you look back on and wonder how so much has happened in such a few pages. I think the last book that made me want to reach into its pages and rescue the main character to quite this extent was Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Although Na Ga might be too passive for some, it's her ability to forgive that is so powerful. She's a character that will stay with me for a long time.
Does she decide to get out of Wanting and cross the border in the end? Well, you'll just have to read it to find out. Very highly recommended.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
`The Road To Wanting' is a book that you can undoubtedly say has one of those rare mixtures of being rather literary, a book with a big story that sometimes isn't easy to read and yet it is a book that is rather readable. I was pulled in from the rather mysterious opening where we find our protagonist Na Ga trying to hang herself in a hotel room, only to be interrupted by the receptionist saying that Mr Jiang her current guardian of sorts has just killed himself. I don't think I have read such an instantly fascinating opening which opens so many questions for quite sometime.
As we read on Wendy Law-Yone very, very slowly allows the fog of confusion to clear. We don't get Na Ga's past, present or future in any cohesive order rather in little glimpses as we are taken back to her wild childhood catching eels, the times when she though she had been saved by an American family, her dark times in Thailand after that. All this is told whilst Na Ga also lets us know how she got to Wanting, a small and dingy town on the Chinese-Burmese borders.
There is so much that Wendy Law-Yone encompasses in what is quite a short and concise yet incredibly atmospheric novel that I feel rather bad to add that something was missing for me. The book had a great pace, plenty of characters and yet for some reason I found myself rather distanced from it. I wondered if this might be because Na Ga is a rather passive and in many ways accidental heroine. She seems to just accept life has it in for her and blindly go wherever it leads and whilst this I am sure is the case for many people I don't know if a lead character in a novel suits it so well. I also think the short burst, which make the book so readable, slightly lessen the impact of all the events that unfold or are revealed. I felt I should have had more of an emotional reaction to this book than I did.
Reading `The Road To Wanting' was an eye opening experience that threw me into a world I knew very little about. I just wish my narrator had been filled with more emotions than just apathy as she described her colourful and sometimes painful past. It could have made what is a very good book a complete page turning literary stunner, though her indifference could of course be the whole point which I am simply missing.
As we read on Wendy Law-Yone very, very slowly allows the fog of confusion to clear. We don't get Na Ga's past, present or future in any cohesive order rather in little glimpses as we are taken back to her wild childhood catching eels, the times when she though she had been saved by an American family, her dark times in Thailand after that. All this is told whilst Na Ga also lets us know how she got to Wanting, a small and dingy town on the Chinese-Burmese borders.
There is so much that Wendy Law-Yone encompasses in what is quite a short and concise yet incredibly atmospheric novel that I feel rather bad to add that something was missing for me. The book had a great pace, plenty of characters and yet for some reason I found myself rather distanced from it. I wondered if this might be because Na Ga is a rather passive and in many ways accidental heroine. She seems to just accept life has it in for her and blindly go wherever it leads and whilst this I am sure is the case for many people I don't know if a lead character in a novel suits it so well. I also think the short burst, which make the book so readable, slightly lessen the impact of all the events that unfold or are revealed. I felt I should have had more of an emotional reaction to this book than I did.
Reading `The Road To Wanting' was an eye opening experience that threw me into a world I knew very little about. I just wish my narrator had been filled with more emotions than just apathy as she described her colourful and sometimes painful past. It could have made what is a very good book a complete page turning literary stunner, though her indifference could of course be the whole point which I am simply missing.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is my first pick from the Orange Prize Long List 2011. The Road to Wanting is Wendy Law-Yone's third novel but my first experience of a novel set in South Eastern Asia, in this case Burma and Thailand.
The "Wanting" of the title is a town on the Chinese/Burmese border where we first encounter our narrator, Naga, a young Burmese girl whose life up until now has been a mixture of poverty, abuse and neglect. Jiang, the man who is to ensure her safe passage over the border to Burma, has just killed himself and Naga also contemplates suicide as she sits in a hotel room, in a limbo-like situation awaiting her fate.
The first person narrative reveals a litany of trials and tribulations which have beleaguered Naga from an early age - as a child her parents sold her into slavery. Later she is "rescued" by an American family living in Rangoon and she leads a relatively comfortable existence as friend/playmate for their daughter. However, happiness is always in short supply as the family abandon her when the political situation becomes unstable. Naga finds herself tricked into prostitution in a brothel in Thailand and is later "rescued" again by another American, Will who will, in turn, abandon her when the novelty wears off. Thus, Naga finds herself at this turning point in her life, facing the possibility of returning to a homeland which probably doesn't exist anymore. In the tradition of her tribe, the Wild Lu, each child had a "name-seed" to which their real name was entrusted but Naga never discovers her real name, mirroring the fact that she is displaced, not really belonging anywhere or to anyone.
I loved the way the author captures the sights, sounds and smells of Burma and Thailand, the traditions of Naga's tribe, the Wild Lu (apparently non-existent but she convinced me!), the seediness of Bangkok, the chasm between the rich and the poor. Surprisingly there is also humour in the midst of all the tragedy. This is a very readable novel, lyrical and a very quiet read which somehow reflects the calm, stoic nature of our narrator Naga. She's been passed from pillar to post and so dehumanised, always wanting to please and serve so that she's never really had the opportunity to be her own person.
The Road to Wanting is a beautifully written, intelligent account of a lost girl at a crossroads in her life; its, at times, matter of fact tone belies a poignancy which deeply affects the reader and you're left with the hope that Naga will eventually achieve the happiness she so richly deserves.
The "Wanting" of the title is a town on the Chinese/Burmese border where we first encounter our narrator, Naga, a young Burmese girl whose life up until now has been a mixture of poverty, abuse and neglect. Jiang, the man who is to ensure her safe passage over the border to Burma, has just killed himself and Naga also contemplates suicide as she sits in a hotel room, in a limbo-like situation awaiting her fate.
The first person narrative reveals a litany of trials and tribulations which have beleaguered Naga from an early age - as a child her parents sold her into slavery. Later she is "rescued" by an American family living in Rangoon and she leads a relatively comfortable existence as friend/playmate for their daughter. However, happiness is always in short supply as the family abandon her when the political situation becomes unstable. Naga finds herself tricked into prostitution in a brothel in Thailand and is later "rescued" again by another American, Will who will, in turn, abandon her when the novelty wears off. Thus, Naga finds herself at this turning point in her life, facing the possibility of returning to a homeland which probably doesn't exist anymore. In the tradition of her tribe, the Wild Lu, each child had a "name-seed" to which their real name was entrusted but Naga never discovers her real name, mirroring the fact that she is displaced, not really belonging anywhere or to anyone.
I loved the way the author captures the sights, sounds and smells of Burma and Thailand, the traditions of Naga's tribe, the Wild Lu (apparently non-existent but she convinced me!), the seediness of Bangkok, the chasm between the rich and the poor. Surprisingly there is also humour in the midst of all the tragedy. This is a very readable novel, lyrical and a very quiet read which somehow reflects the calm, stoic nature of our narrator Naga. She's been passed from pillar to post and so dehumanised, always wanting to please and serve so that she's never really had the opportunity to be her own person.
The Road to Wanting is a beautifully written, intelligent account of a lost girl at a crossroads in her life; its, at times, matter of fact tone belies a poignancy which deeply affects the reader and you're left with the hope that Naga will eventually achieve the happiness she so richly deserves.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
"I can feel shoals of tiny ambient fish gliding under my skin."
We are used to books that do not tell a straightforward story - from the beginning to the end. Writers like to keep you guessing - sometimes about a character's true motivation, or... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Eileen Shaw
IF YOU DO ONE THING THIS SUMMER MAKE IT READING THIS BOOK!!!!!
Law-Yone has done it again! This book took me to Asia, i could see it, smell it and taste it.
The tale follows the life of Na Ga, a young girl born in the little known about... Read more
The tale follows the life of Na Ga, a young girl born in the little known about... Read more
Published on 29 May 2010 by Ms. Rebecca A. Rhodes
A Beautiful, Haunting Look at a Rarely Seen World--Riveting
Law-Yone's combination of dark humor and precisely drawn and unique characters is irresistible. I will not forget Naga, the brutal tragedies in her life, nor the hidden resources... Read more
Published on 14 May 2010 by J. Fundoukos
a really great read
My best read for ages, a great read from the first to the last,intelligent,witty,wise, a page turner
a perfect holiday read, a winner!!
a perfect holiday read, a winner!!
Published on 15 April 2010 by Summer read
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