Status
Call number
Genres
Publication
DDC/MDS
| 813.6 |
Description
A picaresque first novel about love, revenge, art, and Feng Shui. When William Narciso Paulinha, a Filipino street hustler, meets Shem C, a disreputable and social-climbing writer embittered by his lack of success, the Feng Shui scam of the century is born. Under Shem C's guidance, Paulinha assumes the persona of Master Chao, a revered Feng Shui practitioner from Hong Kong. Distorting the Eastern concept of Feng Shui -- the mystical Chinese art of creating a harmonious environment, promising its adherents peace and prosperity -- to accommodate Western demands, they peddle their peculiar brand of this holistic philosophy among New York City's elite.As this latter-day confidence man cuts a swath through upper-crust society, his biting observations form a comic portrait of class resentment and revenge. An auspicious debut, Fixer Chao raises questions of race and privilege, character and identity, and of what it means to be Asian at the turn of the twenty-first century.… (more)
User reviews
For one, William is caught in this game of deceit by Shem, a man who had access and privilege and is the mastermind of the whole plot to swindle these rich city dwellers. Two, we see how William lives and the squalor which is his daily life - how we can judge his actions when he is confronted with an opportunity to make some money and not have to sell his body to do it?
A remarkable novel with intriguing characters, including one of William's victims, Kendo, who, seeing William as his entre to the criminal underworld, latches onto William with tenacious intensity. There is Preciosa, William's upstairs neighbor, a fellow immigrant from the Phillipines, and a secretive woman whose past intrigues William. There are the numerous rich dupes, most importantly Suzy Yamada, who resembles Kirosawa's Isenzu Yamada in looks and spirit. It is she who becomes William's (or, "Master Chao", as he is introduced to society) nemesis and the villain of the novel.
William's story is primarily one of self-discovery, as he faces racism, classism and the anitpathy of the rich for the poor, who work for them and serve them.
Fixer Chao is an examination or a distilling of these two opposing worlds, brought to a closer view as William steps between the two so effortlessly as Master Chao. His personal growth and journey becomes an odyssey for the reader as well. An intriguing view of the social stratification and one man's attempts to climb up and out of indigence and despair.
(Read January 2002)