Five Star Billionaire

March 25, 2013
Aw (Map of the Invisible World), in his third novel, follows five Malaysian immigrants in Shanghai as they try to realize the city’s dazzling promise. Justin C.K. Lim has come to expand his family’s Forbes-listed financial empire, while his old crush Yinghui, just nominated for a Businesswoman of the Year award, is haunted by her idealistic activist past. Phoebe, having grown up in a village that “was not a place for dreams or ambition,” jumps at the chance to take over a friend’s restaurant job in mainland China, but when she arrives, she discovers that the restaurant has been abandoned. Pop star Gary, after conquering Malaysia and Taiwan, comes to cement his idol status, only to find himself under siege by the tabloids. Walter Chao is a powerful billionaire whose charitable deeds are as mystifying as his charm. These characters, whose lives intersect and overlap in the strangest of ways, create a portrait of an unforgiving city that “held its promises just out of your reach.” But like the characters, who are left confused and wanting more, one reaches the novel’s conclusion feeling disappointed. Agent: David Godwin, David Godwin Associates.

April 1, 2013
Making it in Shanghai: Five immigrants find life challenging in Malaysian Aw's third outing. All five are ethnic Chinese from Malaysia. Phoebe and Gary are from the poor, rural North; Justin and Yinghui are from powerful, wealthy families. There's also Walter Chao (more about him later). Phoebe has little going for her, but she knows from self-help books to re-invent herself. Gary, still in his teens, is a pop star; after wowing them in Taiwan, he's preparing for his first Shanghai concert. Yinghui was forced to leave Malaysia when the family business collapsed; now 37, she owns two successful lingerie stores. Justin is here on family business to acquire real estate. When he and Yinghui, who knew each other in Malaysia, have a chance meeting, it counts as a hallelujah moment, simply since any character interaction is a relief from the long slabs of exposition. The only break has been the voice of Walter Chao, who addresses the reader directly. He has overcome poverty in Malaysia to become a successful businessman and author of self-help books (yes, Phoebe's read them). Walter's a philanthropist, he tells us, but is he reliable or a con man? The question gathers urgency after he persuades Yinghui to invest in a cultural center. The answer comes only at the very end, in one throwaway sentence, Aw having seemingly lost interest in his own handiwork. Shanghai, painted in broad strokes, is a city that never sleeps, an eerie replica of New York. There are numerous flashbacks to Malaysia, where Yinghui had a long relationship with Justin's brother; the only interesting writing is the barbed treatment of these two Westernized poseurs. A clunky novel.

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Starred review from April 15, 2013

Think of Aw's third novel as an ingenious game called "How To Be a Billionaire." A how-to guide is interspersed with 30 rules that also serve as chapters, e.g., "Move to Where the Money Is," "Always Rebound After Each Failure," "Strive To Understand the Big Picture." The playing board is Shanghai, that 21st-century city of limitless possibility; the power broker is the eponymous Five Star Billionaire. A quartet of players--all Malaysian immigrants--are revealed one by one: country girl Phoebe, real estate heir Justin, pop superstar Gary, and businesswoman Yinghui, who is about to multiply her success. Aw moves fluidly between past and present, creating a multilayered narrative about chasing, catching, and sometimes losing elusive opportunities. VERDICT London-based Aw, who spent a year in Shanghai on a writing fellowship, has honed his experiences into a literary victory. Admirers of Aw's The Harmony Silk Factory, which won a Whitbread Award and a Commonwealth Prize and was long-listed for the Man Booker, and Map of the Invisible World will clamor to read this, his best thus far. Fiction aficionados with international tastes will surely fall in line as well.--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2013
Phoebe secures a fake ID and a self-help manual to scale the gilded staircase of Shanghai. Ambitious businesswoman Yinghui risks a fortune on real estate with a mysterious magnate. Once wealthy Justin, whose ruined family desperately needs his financial savvy, emerges from his high-rise bunker to face an empire in shambles. And after a drunken meltdown, former teen idol Gary has been reduced to playing small-town shopping centers. Each character in this quartet has emigrated from Aw's own native Malaysia, seduced by the neon profile of metropolitan China, unknowingly connected through Walter Chao, author of the eponymous Secrets of a Five Star Billionaire. Aw travels through time, spinning backstories, shifting narrative focus, and peppering the novel with selections from Chao's guide to success. As with his previous novels, The Harmony Silk Factory (2005) and Map of the Invisible World (2010), Aw's plot unwinds in slow, noir-like spirals, almost refusing to resolve. And like Dickensian London and Fitzgerald's New York, Aw's setting limns a new China flush with fresh capital and cheap labor. An urban complement to Mo Yan's Pow! (2012).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)