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vickywong710's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
lochanreads's review
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Set during the 80s, a disgraced man flees British-occupied Hong Kong for the streets of Bangkok, where he falls into a life of addiction, until he is taken in by a monk called Daishi in the temple of Wat Arun. Several years later, the man known as Buddha returns to Hong Kong, sent back by Daishi to make peace with his past. Residing in a nunnery in Diamond Hill, a shanty town that was once 'the Hollywood of the Orient', Buddha's life becomes entangled with that of four troubled women.
Written with both beautiful and uncomfortable prose, Diamond Hill is a stark depiction of loss and hope in a slowly dying world.
Written with both beautiful and uncomfortable prose, Diamond Hill is a stark depiction of loss and hope in a slowly dying world.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism, Addiction, and Drug abuse
Moderate: Miscarriage, Violence, Animal cruelty, Torture, Cancer, Death, Blood, and Confinement
Minor: Racism and Body shaming
uses some politically insensitive language at times like 'f*g'.bookofcinz's review
2.0
I wanted to love this one but it was an absolute miss. I kept waiting and waiting. I went back to this book at least four times but.... Beautiful cover though.
josefine_wr's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
lydsquid's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
lee's review against another edition
2.0
I really really wanted to like this book…actually, not just like it, but love it. I mean, how often do I come across a book written in English that is set in my birth city of Hong Kong and is actually about HK people, places, culture, history, etc. After reading the premise, my expectation was that this would be a story that was truly HK-focused, with an authentic portrayal of the city that wasn’t written from a primarily Western point of view. Going into this, I was excited and kept thinking to myself — finally, a book about the old HK that will satisfy the nostalgia I’ve been feeling lately about a city I’ve always loved, but had become increasingly foreign to me in recent years. I went into this with high hopes and also preparing to rate it highly. Unfortunately, this book turned out to be nothing like what I expected (in a bad way) and after reading it, instead of feeling nostalgic, I actually ended up feeling frustrated and disappointed.
The biggest issue I had with this book was that the writing was very disjointed and uneven, which wouldn’t have been as bad of a problem except that the story overall was also poorly executed — both of these things, along with several other issues I found, made this an extremely frustrating read for me. In fact, I had actually wanted to DNF this book several times (which is not a good sign, as I’m a stickler for finishing every book I read), but I pressed on, reminding myself every couple pages of all the things I had mentioned above about why I had been so excited to read this. I ultimately finished, but not without resorting to skimming the last 50 pages or so (because by that point, I was already at my wit’s end).
The main thing about the writing and execution that frustrated me was the constant switching back and forth between style and tone — one minute, the writing would be eloquent, descriptive, even philosophical, but then the next minute, the writing would descend into profanity-laced vulgarities that seemed to come out of nowhere. If this happened only once or twice, then it wouldn’t be a problem, but the writing actually alternated between these two extremes for the entire story. As if that weren’t enough, there was also a lot of switching back and forth between English and either formal Chinese or Cantonese slang (with English translation in parentheses next to it) — normally, I would be happy to see a book written in English about Chinese culture / experience utilize Chinese characters as needed to enhance the story, but in this case, the switching was done haphazardly, in a random way that made absolutely no sense to me — for instance, randomly inserting Chinese (with English translation) in the middle of characters’ dialogues or having some side character who only shows up for like a minute blurt out a bunch of profanities in Cantonese as a main character passes by. Again, I would be fine with it if incorporating these phrases served a purpose in the story, advanced the plot, or were necessary to characterization— but none of it did…the phrases that the author chose to write in Chinese didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason to them. From a character perspective, it didn’t make sense for some of the characters to speak a hybrid of English / Cantonese to the extent that these characters did (yes, some Hong Kongers do mix some English in their speech, but most ordinary folks don’t constantly switch back and forth between the two languages like that unless they’re bicultural or they were educated overseas or in an international school where everything is taught in English). It almost seemed like the author couldn’t decide whether he wanted to write in English or Chinese and so decided to do a hodgepodge of both.
In addition, I also found the prolific and gratuitous use of Cantonese slang words and profanities throughout the story not only unnecessary, but also annoying. In the Author’s Note at the end of the book, Kit Fan explains that he included the Cantonese slang and profanities in both Chinese and English throughout the book in order to “give a culturally distinctive inflection to a language that is under threat, not unlike the shanty town in the novel” – while I agree with the sentiment that Cantonese is a language that has increasingly come under threat over the years, I disagree with the method of sprinkling ‘random Cantonese profanities + their English translations’ throughout the story as a means of preserving the “vitality of the language.” Even if the author wanted to show the distinctive cultural flavor of Cantonese slang (or the language as a whole), incorporating a few phrases here and there would’ve been enough — but inundating the story with it, especially when majority of the slang and profanities were irrelevant to the story, that’s going overboard in my opinion. In terms of the translations in parentheses— perhaps because I am both a Cantonese and English speaker myself (as well as a translator for the Chinese/English language pairing), this method especially frustrated me, as my brain is wired to automatically compare the Chinese and English to see if it was translated correctly (quite a bit of it actually wasn’t), so each time it switched to Chinese, I got jarred out of the story – basically, rather than enhancing the story or helping me appreciate it more, the Chinese words and phrases with its translations ended up being a distraction that made it difficult to concentrate on the story itself.
Speaking of the story – well, this was another aspect that I found problematic. First of all, there wasn’t really a plot to speak of – there were a lot of detailed descriptions of places and characters’ surroundings, but little to no substance in terms of what actually happens. If I had to summarize this book, I would say that it is essentially an “information dump about HK” – there is an abundance of name-dropping of various HK people, places, things, historical events, cultural aspects, etc., almost all of which would be recognizable to anyone decently familiar with the city, but none of it advanced the plot and very little (if any) was actually relevant to the story. Even the characters had no depth to them -- it seemed like the main purpose of the characters was to either 1) describe their surroundings, or 2) regurgitate heaps of (oftentimes unnecessary and irrelevant) information about HK to anyone who would listen, or 3) insult others with some type of profanity / vulgarity and/or drop a random Chinese idiom in the middle of a lengthy, rambling discourse about things may or may not have been important, but I had already stopped caring by that point.
What bothered me most about this book though was the stereotypical way in which all the female characters were portrayed in the story. Of course, I wasn’t expecting a male author to write complex female characters completely accurately, but I was disappointed (and more than a bit miffed) that the author seemed to go the route of portraying all the women as sexual stereotypes who essentially fell into three categories: the uptight, sex-deprived nun; the promiscuous, ‘gangster wannabe’ tomboy; and the sex-crazy, possibly a little unhinged prostitute. Though I understand that these portrayals probably weren’t intentional on the author’s part, as a woman, I found such depictions offensive and worrisome, especially since we’ve seen over the past year how harmful perpetuating such stereotypes can be.
With all that said, I do believe in giving credit where it’s due and so I have to say that the author did a pretty good job giving readers unfamiliar with HK a better understanding of what life in Diamond Hill was like back in the day. The feelings of despair and uncertainty that were pretty widespread throughout HK in the years after the signing of the Joint Declaration were also well-depicted — feelings that were exacerbated tenfold after what happened in Tiananmen in 1989 (and sparked fears about the fate of Hong Kongers after the handover).
Even though this book absolutely didn’t work for me, I am clearly the exception here given all the 4 and 5 star reviews I’ve seen for this one. So I would say check out the other reviews so you can make an informed decision on whether you’d be interested in reading this one.
Received ARC from World Editions via Edelweiss.
The biggest issue I had with this book was that the writing was very disjointed and uneven, which wouldn’t have been as bad of a problem except that the story overall was also poorly executed — both of these things, along with several other issues I found, made this an extremely frustrating read for me. In fact, I had actually wanted to DNF this book several times (which is not a good sign, as I’m a stickler for finishing every book I read), but I pressed on, reminding myself every couple pages of all the things I had mentioned above about why I had been so excited to read this. I ultimately finished, but not without resorting to skimming the last 50 pages or so (because by that point, I was already at my wit’s end).
The main thing about the writing and execution that frustrated me was the constant switching back and forth between style and tone — one minute, the writing would be eloquent, descriptive, even philosophical, but then the next minute, the writing would descend into profanity-laced vulgarities that seemed to come out of nowhere. If this happened only once or twice, then it wouldn’t be a problem, but the writing actually alternated between these two extremes for the entire story. As if that weren’t enough, there was also a lot of switching back and forth between English and either formal Chinese or Cantonese slang (with English translation in parentheses next to it) — normally, I would be happy to see a book written in English about Chinese culture / experience utilize Chinese characters as needed to enhance the story, but in this case, the switching was done haphazardly, in a random way that made absolutely no sense to me — for instance, randomly inserting Chinese (with English translation) in the middle of characters’ dialogues or having some side character who only shows up for like a minute blurt out a bunch of profanities in Cantonese as a main character passes by. Again, I would be fine with it if incorporating these phrases served a purpose in the story, advanced the plot, or were necessary to characterization— but none of it did…the phrases that the author chose to write in Chinese didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason to them. From a character perspective, it didn’t make sense for some of the characters to speak a hybrid of English / Cantonese to the extent that these characters did (yes, some Hong Kongers do mix some English in their speech, but most ordinary folks don’t constantly switch back and forth between the two languages like that unless they’re bicultural or they were educated overseas or in an international school where everything is taught in English). It almost seemed like the author couldn’t decide whether he wanted to write in English or Chinese and so decided to do a hodgepodge of both.
In addition, I also found the prolific and gratuitous use of Cantonese slang words and profanities throughout the story not only unnecessary, but also annoying. In the Author’s Note at the end of the book, Kit Fan explains that he included the Cantonese slang and profanities in both Chinese and English throughout the book in order to “give a culturally distinctive inflection to a language that is under threat, not unlike the shanty town in the novel” – while I agree with the sentiment that Cantonese is a language that has increasingly come under threat over the years, I disagree with the method of sprinkling ‘random Cantonese profanities + their English translations’ throughout the story as a means of preserving the “vitality of the language.” Even if the author wanted to show the distinctive cultural flavor of Cantonese slang (or the language as a whole), incorporating a few phrases here and there would’ve been enough — but inundating the story with it, especially when majority of the slang and profanities were irrelevant to the story, that’s going overboard in my opinion. In terms of the translations in parentheses— perhaps because I am both a Cantonese and English speaker myself (as well as a translator for the Chinese/English language pairing), this method especially frustrated me, as my brain is wired to automatically compare the Chinese and English to see if it was translated correctly (quite a bit of it actually wasn’t), so each time it switched to Chinese, I got jarred out of the story – basically, rather than enhancing the story or helping me appreciate it more, the Chinese words and phrases with its translations ended up being a distraction that made it difficult to concentrate on the story itself.
Speaking of the story – well, this was another aspect that I found problematic. First of all, there wasn’t really a plot to speak of – there were a lot of detailed descriptions of places and characters’ surroundings, but little to no substance in terms of what actually happens. If I had to summarize this book, I would say that it is essentially an “information dump about HK” – there is an abundance of name-dropping of various HK people, places, things, historical events, cultural aspects, etc., almost all of which would be recognizable to anyone decently familiar with the city, but none of it advanced the plot and very little (if any) was actually relevant to the story. Even the characters had no depth to them -- it seemed like the main purpose of the characters was to either 1) describe their surroundings, or 2) regurgitate heaps of (oftentimes unnecessary and irrelevant) information about HK to anyone who would listen, or 3) insult others with some type of profanity / vulgarity and/or drop a random Chinese idiom in the middle of a lengthy, rambling discourse about things may or may not have been important, but I had already stopped caring by that point.
What bothered me most about this book though was the stereotypical way in which all the female characters were portrayed in the story. Of course, I wasn’t expecting a male author to write complex female characters completely accurately, but I was disappointed (and more than a bit miffed) that the author seemed to go the route of portraying all the women as sexual stereotypes who essentially fell into three categories: the uptight, sex-deprived nun; the promiscuous, ‘gangster wannabe’ tomboy; and the sex-crazy, possibly a little unhinged prostitute. Though I understand that these portrayals probably weren’t intentional on the author’s part, as a woman, I found such depictions offensive and worrisome, especially since we’ve seen over the past year how harmful perpetuating such stereotypes can be.
With all that said, I do believe in giving credit where it’s due and so I have to say that the author did a pretty good job giving readers unfamiliar with HK a better understanding of what life in Diamond Hill was like back in the day. The feelings of despair and uncertainty that were pretty widespread throughout HK in the years after the signing of the Joint Declaration were also well-depicted — feelings that were exacerbated tenfold after what happened in Tiananmen in 1989 (and sparked fears about the fate of Hong Kongers after the handover).
Even though this book absolutely didn’t work for me, I am clearly the exception here given all the 4 and 5 star reviews I’ve seen for this one. So I would say check out the other reviews so you can make an informed decision on whether you’d be interested in reading this one.
Received ARC from World Editions via Edelweiss.
fiendfull's review
4.0
Diamond Hill is a fascinating novel about a place disappearing and a city changing, set in Hong Kong in the late 1980s. Diamond Hill is a run down shanty town with a Buddhist nunnery, drug addiction, and a faded memory of being a place for making films. When a man, nicknamed Buddha and a recovering heroin addict, takes refuge in the nunnery when he returns to his home of Hong Kong from Bangkok, he meets a strange selection of people, like the severe Iron Nun, Quartz who has forgotten her past, and Boss, a teenage gang leader who dreams of her escape. All the while, Diamond Hill is under threat from the various people and power across it, and looming redevelopment.
Kit Fan really draws you into the world of the novel, Hong Kong with looming knowledge of the handover from Britain to China coming in 1997, and into the issues of colonialism, displacement, and self that run through the characters' lives. The characters in general are heavily tied to language and place—Cantonese and English, Hong Kong and England and Thailand, Diamond Hill and elsewhere—and this gives a sense of some of the kinds of tension at play. Power is crucial: who has it and who doesn't, but also how it can be a presence in different ways. Buddha, as a protagonist drawn into others' lives to avoid thinking about his own, is an interesting viewpoint into the narrative, suggesting how hard it is to ignore both the past and the future.
Both a look at distinctive characters dealing with their past and what they might do next, and a wider commentary on Hong Kong at this particular moment, Diamond Hill is an eye-opening novel that I found gripping and atmospheric. I enjoyed the chance to find out more about Hong Kong's recent history too.
Kit Fan really draws you into the world of the novel, Hong Kong with looming knowledge of the handover from Britain to China coming in 1997, and into the issues of colonialism, displacement, and self that run through the characters' lives. The characters in general are heavily tied to language and place—Cantonese and English, Hong Kong and England and Thailand, Diamond Hill and elsewhere—and this gives a sense of some of the kinds of tension at play. Power is crucial: who has it and who doesn't, but also how it can be a presence in different ways. Buddha, as a protagonist drawn into others' lives to avoid thinking about his own, is an interesting viewpoint into the narrative, suggesting how hard it is to ignore both the past and the future.
Both a look at distinctive characters dealing with their past and what they might do next, and a wider commentary on Hong Kong at this particular moment, Diamond Hill is an eye-opening novel that I found gripping and atmospheric. I enjoyed the chance to find out more about Hong Kong's recent history too.
edwina's review
4.0
'Diamond Hill' by Kit Fan was a captivating and culturally rich novel that encapsulated the nostalgia, love and sadness of his own home of Hong Kong through the fictitious storyline of Buddha, a recovering heroin addict who returns to Diamond Hill from Bangkok at the insistence of Daishi, a dying monk in Thailand who helped him get clean. Daishi instructs Buddha to stay in a dilapidated Buddhist monastery in the heart of Diamond Hill where he meets the Iron Nun who manages the nunnery. Through his lens, we see Diamond Hill, a shabby neighbourhood and shanty town gradually demolished and destroyed in order to make way for apartment blocks in the area. At the same time, he comes across a faded movie extra who calls herself Audrey Hepburn and Boss, the daughter of Audrey who is a gang leader working with the Triad to oversee heroin distribution in the area. Throughout his return to Hong Kong, we see Buddha trying to make sense of the place where he was born and grappling with everything and everyone around him.
The novel was an evocative, exhilarating and bittersweet read from the beginning to the end and it is evident that Fan has put so much of his heart and soul towards the portrayal of a place he calls home and doing so as true as he possibly can. His gorgeous poetic prose and rich descriptions had me yearning for the city of that serves as the foundation and lifeblood of my culture and my identity. In much the same way, Fan writes Buddha's story as a requiem for a lost city that will never be the same especially considering the events in Hong Kong that have transpired in the past two years. It is evident that the themes in the novel despite its plot-line set when the Sino British Joint Declaration was already a signal of the ticking time-bomb in relation to Hong Kong's status as a British colony; can be linked to Hong Kong in the present day as a disappearing city. It is haunting as the novel begins in 1987 and shows Hong Kong in transition - it is 10 years before the British hands the city over to China but the Buddhist nuns, drug gangs, property developers, the government and foreign powers are all itching to have a piece of Diamond Hill.
Fan illustrates the intense locality of Hong Kong which is evoked through the fusion of cultures that come from British and Cantonese influences. At the same time, Fan makes a beautiful move by inserting Cantonese slang and language in the novel, to reinforce the importance and mark it has on Hong Kong as a city and to resist the idea of its current status as a disappearing language. As a great philosopher once said, “you don’t know what you got till it’s gone”, a statement which may well be true of my own relationship with Hong Kong, but certainly isn’t for the characters in the novel, who are fully aware of the impending loss of Diamond Hill’s identity. It is poignant in the novel that Fan touches on the wistful reflections on a city in the precipice - halfway between China and Britain, neither one or the other, or either. In some ways, the novel felt timely on a personal level in relation to the disappearing image of Hong Kong as the Pearl of the Orient which rings true to the intense power of China over the region. Like Diamond Hill, the novel's plot-line and its characters intertwine and connect in ways that create a fascinating, moving and compelling read that makes it well worth the read. 4.5 stars for Kit Fan's 'Diamond Hill'. Absolutely beautiful.
The novel was an evocative, exhilarating and bittersweet read from the beginning to the end and it is evident that Fan has put so much of his heart and soul towards the portrayal of a place he calls home and doing so as true as he possibly can. His gorgeous poetic prose and rich descriptions had me yearning for the city of that serves as the foundation and lifeblood of my culture and my identity. In much the same way, Fan writes Buddha's story as a requiem for a lost city that will never be the same especially considering the events in Hong Kong that have transpired in the past two years. It is evident that the themes in the novel despite its plot-line set when the Sino British Joint Declaration was already a signal of the ticking time-bomb in relation to Hong Kong's status as a British colony; can be linked to Hong Kong in the present day as a disappearing city. It is haunting as the novel begins in 1987 and shows Hong Kong in transition - it is 10 years before the British hands the city over to China but the Buddhist nuns, drug gangs, property developers, the government and foreign powers are all itching to have a piece of Diamond Hill.
Fan illustrates the intense locality of Hong Kong which is evoked through the fusion of cultures that come from British and Cantonese influences. At the same time, Fan makes a beautiful move by inserting Cantonese slang and language in the novel, to reinforce the importance and mark it has on Hong Kong as a city and to resist the idea of its current status as a disappearing language. As a great philosopher once said, “you don’t know what you got till it’s gone”, a statement which may well be true of my own relationship with Hong Kong, but certainly isn’t for the characters in the novel, who are fully aware of the impending loss of Diamond Hill’s identity. It is poignant in the novel that Fan touches on the wistful reflections on a city in the precipice - halfway between China and Britain, neither one or the other, or either. In some ways, the novel felt timely on a personal level in relation to the disappearing image of Hong Kong as the Pearl of the Orient which rings true to the intense power of China over the region. Like Diamond Hill, the novel's plot-line and its characters intertwine and connect in ways that create a fascinating, moving and compelling read that makes it well worth the read. 4.5 stars for Kit Fan's 'Diamond Hill'. Absolutely beautiful.
mandywoo's review
4.0
I think for sentimental reasons, I really loved this book. As described in the synopsis, it was truly a "requiem for a disappearing city", the city being Hong Kong, which continues to fade more and more everyday. Set in 1987, I learned lot of fascinating Hong Kong history, like Diamond Hill being a shanty town and the complicated political atmosphere after Britain and China had signed the Join Declaration/Basic Law 3 years prior. You could feel the characters' sense of hopelessness that was due to Hong Kong's rapid changes/identity crisis. One con though was that I didn't understand Buddha's choices at the end but the setting was highly immersive and the story was captivating and unique, so it was still highly enjoyable and definitely an important read.