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Brownout On Breadfruit Boulevard
Brownout on Breadfruit Boulevard
- GenresFictionLiterary Fiction
320 pages, Paperback
First published April 8, 1995
About the author
Timothy Mo
12 books68 followersTimothy Peter Mo is an Anglo-Chinese novelist. He is the son of a British mother and a Hong Kong Chinese father. He came to Britain as a 10-year-old.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 16, 2023
Is the opening chapter 'the filthiest of any book ever written'? That was Mo's own claim and I'm not going to dispute it. The scatalogical opening excruciatingly extends a Gillray sketch through many paragraphs. It's unforgettable and unpalatable but unflinching enough to have been a missed opportunity if only the metaphor had been sustained. I didn't hugely enjoy this book and part of the reason is its messiness - in terms of plot flow, if this had been a Regency stool examination, I would have been prescribing an improved diet.
'Brownout' is an experimental and envelope-pushing novel on postcolonial exploitation and corruption, printed at a time when he had firmly established his literary bona fides. Every novel before 1995's 'Brownout' had either won or been shortlisted for a major prize. Many of the same winning elements are found here, but much less consistently. We get gun-toting gangland brutality (not dissimilar to 'The Redundancy of Courage'), poor families eeking out subsistence under the threat of violence ('Sour Sweet') and elements of comedy ('The Monkey King', again 'Sour Sweet'). As with previous works by Mo, I felt I got to understand the country better - in this case the Philippines - but it was more of a slog. I'm not surprised that this one missed out on the honours.
I'm not unhappy to have read a book that took me out of my comfort zone. Nevertheless, the disorienting shifts in perspective (Boyet, Neumark, Init, Pfeidwengler etc...) made it hard to follow, with sections that don't clearly relate. The epilogue works to tie things together on what happened to the characters - both expected and unexpected - but by this time I didn't hugely care. 'Brownout' of course refers to the partial electricity losses (short of a full blackout) experienced in the developing Philippines. There were surges in narrative interest, but overall this book flickers and fails to fully to come to life.
The book starts memorably, flashes to temporarily illuminate, but often remains in murky ill-defined twilight. The conference/forum scene is a late peak. Readers are given a plausible, thoughtful and occasionally humourous Question Time-like debate on the state of the nation. It accurately captures the way elites on panels can end up sounding like part of the same chummy clique, despite huge differences in political and social perspectives. It was a shame that nuggets of gold needed gleaning from the tide, much as the Victorian's used to collect turds from the city streets. Speaking of which, let's hope that Mo's next novel - Pure - lives up to its name...
'Brownout' is an experimental and envelope-pushing novel on postcolonial exploitation and corruption, printed at a time when he had firmly established his literary bona fides. Every novel before 1995's 'Brownout' had either won or been shortlisted for a major prize. Many of the same winning elements are found here, but much less consistently. We get gun-toting gangland brutality (not dissimilar to 'The Redundancy of Courage'), poor families eeking out subsistence under the threat of violence ('Sour Sweet') and elements of comedy ('The Monkey King', again 'Sour Sweet'). As with previous works by Mo, I felt I got to understand the country better - in this case the Philippines - but it was more of a slog. I'm not surprised that this one missed out on the honours.
I'm not unhappy to have read a book that took me out of my comfort zone. Nevertheless, the disorienting shifts in perspective (Boyet, Neumark, Init, Pfeidwengler etc...) made it hard to follow, with sections that don't clearly relate. The epilogue works to tie things together on what happened to the characters - both expected and unexpected - but by this time I didn't hugely care. 'Brownout' of course refers to the partial electricity losses (short of a full blackout) experienced in the developing Philippines. There were surges in narrative interest, but overall this book flickers and fails to fully to come to life.
The book starts memorably, flashes to temporarily illuminate, but often remains in murky ill-defined twilight. The conference/forum scene is a late peak. Readers are given a plausible, thoughtful and occasionally humourous Question Time-like debate on the state of the nation. It accurately captures the way elites on panels can end up sounding like part of the same chummy clique, despite huge differences in political and social perspectives. It was a shame that nuggets of gold needed gleaning from the tide, much as the Victorian's used to collect turds from the city streets. Speaking of which, let's hope that Mo's next novel - Pure - lives up to its name...
November 27, 2013
Disappointing compared to Mo's other books. Set in Philippines, story of journalists, politicians and corruption. Just felt at the end what was the point of the book ? It petered out and then had an epilogue which tried to wrap up the stories but failed.
September 4, 2018
story of power politics, corruption and academia in the Philippines. Wide range of characters but some are not fully believable. Extraneous description of bad behaviour by many an a large helping of David Lodge type descriptions of international conferences. The overall picture is that corruption is only sometimes found out; those that cheat and connive sometimes win. compared to earlier work by Mo, this was disappointing (I took a long time to read it, perhaps you need to immerse yourself quickly).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 4, 2010
Not as interesting or as easy a read as Sour Sweet. But still a nice read to learn a little more about issues in the Phillipines. I had to constantly ask a Filipino colleague what the Filipino words meant!
July 23, 2011
Think I made a mistake comparing this in my mind to Sour Sweet....found this a little dull.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews