Shanghai Grand

March 21, 2016
Journalist Grescoe’s narrative is a keenly observant, sometimes soulful portrait of Emily “Mickey” Hahn, an American writer who lived in Shanghai from 1935 to 1943, and of China’s political and social realities during that tumultuous period in its history: war with Japan, encroaching communism, and widespread squalor and opium addiction. Grescoe also portrays the unique culture and personalities of Shanghai. Mickey, a Missouri-born free spirit, arrived in China in 1935 during a stopover en route to Africa, and stayed for eight years. Her 52 books and numerous New Yorker vignettes made her famous; her pet gibbon, penchant for cigars, and affair with a married man made her infamous. She was linked with Sir Victor Sassoon, the wealthy owner of Shanghai’s Cathay Hotel; the “decadent” poet Zau Sinmay, who initiated her voracious opium addiction; and Charles Boxer, who became her husband after a scandalous affair. Grescoe (Straphanger) incorporates a plethora of detail about events, including the Battle of Shanghai, Black Saturday, and WWII, and famous figures such as Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong. This is a wonderful book, but the voluminous detail might make it slow going for some readers. Agent: Michelle Tessler, Tessler Literary Agency.

April 15, 2016
An intrepid journalist in free-wheeling 1930s Shanghai.At that time, Shanghai was "one of the most cosmopolitan places on the face of the earth," replete with "gin slings and sing-song girls, rickshaw coolies and Bolshevik spies." It was a place, writes journalist Grescoe (Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile, 2012, etc.) in this lively biography of a city and some of its colorful inhabitants, "to which the ambitious, the wily, and the desperate could escape to discard old identities and recreate their lives from scratch." New Yorker writer Emily Hahn arrived there in 1935, intending to stay for two weeks. She fled, along with other expatriates, in 1943. Those eight years were filled with adventure, danger, love, and sex. She soon met the "free-spending playboy" and real estate mogul Sir Victor Sassoon, who had built, among many other edifices, the sumptuous Cathay Hotel, "the best address in the Far East." He lived in its penthouse, where he entertained the rich, famous, and beautiful, such as the 30-year-old Hahn. Besides accepting gifts from Sir Victor, Hahn supported herself by reporting for a Shanghai newspaper, and soon she began to contribute pieces about exotic China to the New Yorker. Among them were "pen portraits" of a man she called Pan Heh-ven. He was Zau Sinmay, a famous poet--dashing, handsome, "fabulously wealthy"--and her lover. When he balked at being the subject of her "cultural stereotyping," she was unapologetic: "I use people," she said. Sinmay introduced her to smoking opium, which accelerated from "a harmless indulgence" to a 12-pipe-per-day addiction before she checked into a hospital for a cure. Hahn's challenges intensified during the 13-week Battle of Shanghai in 1937, turbulent Chinese politics, and the Japanese occupation. The author deftly follows Hahn's adventures through this "city of legend." Grescoe exuberantly captures the glamour and intrigue of a lost world.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2016

From generals and spies to writers and entrepreneurs, Grescoe (Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile) portrays the characters who passed through the Cathay Hotel in Shanghai beginning in the early 1930s, focusing on New Yorker writer Emily "Mickey" Hahn and her relationship with Chinese poet Sinmay Zau. The fascinating historical accounts collected from archival records and old correspondence provide a feeling of biography mixed with historical fiction, although the facts are solid. Through this blended approach, Grescoe's work will appeal to readers with a historical sweet tooth as the narrative provides the information of a textbook but in a more enjoyable form. The author depicts a wide range of personalities as Shanghai was a place where the "ambitious, the wily, and the desperate could escape to discard old identities." Grescoe continues, "It was in Shanghai that chambermaids became White Russian princesses, and sons of impoverished peasants made themselves into crime overlords." VERDICT An entertaining read for those interested in Chinese history or past and present Shanghai.--Casey Watters, Singapore Management Univ.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2016
In the mid-1930s, Shanghai served as a cosmopolitan crossroads for a world about to spin out of control. Attracting freewheeling citizens from around the globe, prewar Shanghai was the temporary home of a colorful variety of expats, adventurers, criminals, businessmen, dissidents, spies, and journalists. One such journalist, who alighted in Shanghai in 1935, was the intrepid Emily Mickey Hahn. Beautiful, fearless, and eccentric, Hahn immersed herself in the whirlwind revolving around the sumptuous Cathay Hotel, owned and operated by real-estate tycoon Victor Sassoon, while filing exotic stories for the New Yorker. Swept up into a tempestuous affair with Chinese poet and publisher Zau Sinmay, who introduced her to Shanghai's cultural elite and the addictive pleasures and perils of opium, Hahn was not only a witness to but also an active participant in the frenetic last gasp of a lifestyle on the cusp of extinction. Grescoe (Straphanger, 2012) interweaves a cast of intriguing international characters into this seductive biography of a time, a place, a poet, and a girl.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)