The New York Times Book Review - USA (2020-09-13)

12 SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2020

SARAH MULLINS,an American woman

newly arrived in Bangkok, wakes in her

apartment at dawn. The first winds and

rains of a monsoon are sweeping in and

geckos hunt on the walls above her bed.

Later that morning, while taking a dip in

the communal swimming pool, she meets

Mali, a “Thai or Eurasian” woman about

her age, “30 more or less.” Befriended by

her and two other women in the complex —

Ximena, a Chilean chef, and Natalie, a

British hotel manager — Sarah seems

about to build a life for herself. But her new

friends, the staff in her apartment block

and Thai society as a whole all appear to

have other plans for her.

Like many of the characters in

Lawrence Osborne’s new novel, “The

Glass Kingdom,” Sarah is on the run. Her

back story of defrauding her employer, an

elderly author she once revered, is no more

than a device for getting her to Thailand

with a suitcase full of cash, which she

stashes in her closet and is then conven-

iently happy to tell people about. She’s also

the kind of person who will forget to lock

her door, even when she’s frightened, and

leaves a bloodied nightgown — evidence of

her complicity in a murder — in a washing

machine, “stupidly forgotten” for a whole

week.

The point of view switches first to the se-

cretive Mali and then begins to roam from

one character to another, often in the same

scene. New perspectives and back stories

keep being introduced even toward the

end, when we would really just rather

know what is going to happen.

This wandering viewpoint — which

seems too arbitrary to count as authorial

omniscience — is annoying, but as unrest

grows on the streets outside, and the char-

acters become trapped in the apartment

block, the novel begins to exert a sinister

pull. Gradually, it becomes apparent that

Sarah and her predicament have never

been the point. The clue is in the title: The

main character of “The Glass Kingdom” is

the glass Kingdom, the apartment com-

plex, with its yellow flowers in the lobby

denoting the owner’s loyalty to the authori-

ties, even as civil unrest leads to frequent

power cuts and the rainy season gathers

oppressive force. Before long, the army is

called out onto the streets of Bangkok, the

air-conditioning in the building malfunc-

tions and the wealthier residents flee in

droves. For Sarah, the Kingdom becomes

half refuge, half prison.

It is at this point that the full force of Os-

borne’s acutely drawn but bleak and bitter

vision comes into play. When Sarah is

forced to descend the emergency stairwell

during a power cut, she picks her way

“slowly downward, feeling the walls with

her hands... her head beaten softly by

clouds of moths.” Later, when the security

guards have fled along with most of the

residents, packs of stray dogs enter the

building and begin to roam the pitch-black

corridors, sniffing at her door at night.

Osborne has often been compared to

Graham Greene, and it sometimes feels as

though he would be more comfortable set-

ting his books in the 1930s or ’40s, when

women were “girls” and the local inhab-

itants of an equatorial country were not to

be trusted. “The Glass Kingdom” seems to

be set some time after Thailand’s 2014 mili-

tary coup, although the exact year is never

stated. There are glancing references to

Facebook and Google, but even though the

main characters are international 30-

somethings nobody seems to check their

emails or social media; they hardly even

use their mobile phones.

WHERE OSBORNE ISineluctably Greenian

is in his misanthropy. The Thai staff of the

Kingdom may veer toward stereotype, but

the disdain the foreigners show for them is

more than reciprocated. Goi, the apart-

ment-block maid, observes that the ex-

pats, the farang,are like “monstrous chil-

dren” who are “always unhappy in petty

and enigmatic ways,” and the author saves

his most cutting satire for the revolting Ro-

land, Natalie’s husband, who visits local

drinking places for “a couple of Dalwhin-

nies at the bar and a pretty girl, a bout of

nothingness,” while being possessively

jealous of his wife’s female friends.

The main plot of the book seems inciden-

tal to these character sketches. There’s the

murder, and some blackmail, but what

draws Osborne’s finest sentences is obser-

vation and atmosphere: “By sundown,

mist had curled around the tops of the tow-

ers and flashes of lightning took the form of

immense trees with dozens of branches

that reached down and momentarily

touched the earth.” Or: “On the matted and

long-abandoned cables that looped their

way across the surfaces of the shop-houses

a few birds sat morosely, as if waiting for

someone to make a mistake.” The author’s

exceptional descriptive skills fuel an over-

whelming sense of menace: It is no mean

feat to make the ending of a novel truly

shocking when the reader doesn’t particu-

larly like or believe in any of the charac-

ters. The conclusion may be nihilistic to the

point of sadism, but the next day you will

still be thinking of Sarah’s fate with hor-

ror. 0

Quiet American

A woman hides out in Bangkok amid civil unrest.

By LOUISE DOUGHTY

THE GLASS KINGDOM

By Lawrence Osbourne

292 pp. Hogarth. $27.

CHLOE CUSHMAN

LOUISE DOUGHTY’Smost recent novel, “Black

Water,” was a New York Times Notable Book

in 2016.

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