The Man in the Wooden Hat

Starred review from August 3, 2009
Octogenarian Gardam's latest, told with quintessentially British humor, bookends the two-time Whitbread winner's earlier novel, Old Filth
, about a barrister who becomes a renowned lawyer in the Far East whose nickname, Filth, speaks volumes: failed in London, try Hong Kong. This book concentrates on the courtship and marriage of Filth and his wife, Betty, and then flits across the years to their final days, revealing a backstory of secret trysts and desires that each concealed from the other during their long, childless marriage. Filth and Betty's early days in Hong Kong tingle with the weight of the past: Betty spent the war starving in a Japanese internment camp in Shanghai; Filth talks “in his sleep in the passionate Malay of his childhood.” The supporting characters in their steamy, crowded world are a bizarre lot (a card-flinging Chinese dwarf among them). Gardam's prose is witty and precise, and the hole in the middle of the story is obviously to be filled by reading (or rereading) Old Filth
.

Starred review from August 1, 2009
A companion to the Orange Prize nominee Old Filth (2006).
When Gardam first introduced Sir Edward Feathers, his wife Betty was already dead. This book tells her story, and it's magnificent. Elisabeth Macintosh is a brave, resourceful and unconventional young woman. Like Eddie, she was born in Asia in the early 20th century, and she spent World War II in a Japanese internment camp. Both Betty and Eddie are orphans when they meet in Hong Kong, and Eddie's proposal is compelled by a singular mix of love, need and survival instinct. Gardam's characters-even those who appear for a few lines-are all fully formed and intriguing, and she has an impeccable way with nuance and detail. But her subject is not just a single couple: It is also their way of life. Betty and Eddie are the last representatives of a crumbling empire. Even when they retire to a Wiltshire village, they are "lifetime expats." They are never at home in England, but they embody an idea of Englishness that is rapidly disappearing. They have lived through war, and they know how to endure. They have been bred to eschew selfishness and self-pity, but Gardam-without making her characters maudlin or pathetic-gives voice to the feelings they would never express aloud. As they walk together through a Hong Kong slum, Betty's friend-another expat and a missionary-tells her,"You need a cause...We must forget ourselves, Bets. Our Englishness" Betty's response is to think, "Amy had not been in the Camps." With this silent sentence, Gardam speaks volumes about her heroine, and she offers a quiet elegy for an entire generation.
Funny, intelligent and immensely moving.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 15, 2009
Edward Feathers, aka Old Filth (an acronym for "Failed in London, Try Hong Kong"), Gardam's proper lawyer and judge, is back for a second outing (after "Old Filth"), this time as seen through the eyes of his wife, Betty. Lately returned from her wartime work at Bletchley Park and now a regular among the expat community of Hong Kong, Betty is cocooned in comfortable gentility with Filth, a loving but distant husband largely preoccupied with his legal life. After a childhood spent in a Japanese labor camp, she is now unable to have children and largely unfocused; her brief premarital fling with Filth's arch enemy, Terry Veneering, creates an enduring bond with him and his young son, Harry, who fills a void in her life. VERDICT Admirers of "Old Filth" will be delighted to discover the backstory of his marriage and to renew acquaintances with a dear friend. Those meeting him and Mrs. Feathers for the first time will surely want more. An elegant portrait of an old-world marriage. Highly recommended.Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2009
Readers who enjoyed Gardams Old Filth (2006) will welcome her new novel. A companion and an amplification rather than a sequel, it tells much of the same story, but from a different angle. Whereas jurist Sir Edward Feathers (aka Filth, for Failed in London, Try Hong Kong) was at the heart of the earlier work, here his wife, Betty, takes center stage, and we learn much more about their courtship and wedding in Hong Kong and their 50-year marriage. At the novels end, we revisit Filth in old age, retired in Dorset and a widower wrestling with his past. Although the new book offers many rewards with its combination of sharp humor and deep humanity, readers who come upon it without having read Old Filth may be mystified at times. Albert Ross, for example, the dwarf who played such a pivotal role in Filths life in the previous book, might seem an inexplicable presence here. Be sure to recommend the two books in tandem.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)