THE GLASS KINGDOM (2021)
By Lawrence Osborne
Random House, 304 pages
★★★
Tales of Westerners out of their depth in foreign climes spark comparisons to Graham Greene. That's unfair, given Greene’s exalted standing in the literary canon, but inevitable. The Glass Kingdom is a psychological mystery set in Thailand, presumably in recent times, though author Lawrence Osborne prefers inner histories to collective ones.
Because of its strategic importance during the Cold War, Westerners like to pretend that Thailand is a benevolent monarchy. That’s not true, but the romance of Bangkok and the pristine beaches of Phuket add to the tendency to ignore Thailand’s kleptocratic royals, the military’s iron grip upon the populace, and its seedy underbelly. The latter quality is why the novel’s thieving central character Sarah Mullins, finds it a good place to hide out as she plots her next move. The title derives its name from a once-posh-now-fading apartment tower complex. The fragility of glass is, of course, an obvious metaphor for things that easily shatter. Another is that what is seen clearly is often out of synch with what goes on behind drawn shades or in the shadows in the streets.
Sarah is a con artist who won the trust of April Laverty, an august but ageing novelist. Mullins forges documents, disguises herself, and absconds to Bangkok with a suitcase filled with an ill-begotten $200,000 from fake Laverty papers she sold to collectors. In Thailand, Sarah spends a lot of time on her own and it would have been better had she kept things that way. Instead, Sarah befriends several other women: Ximena, a Chilean-born chef; Mali, a Thai woman of uncertain virtue whose current beau is a Japanese businessman named Ryo; and Natalie, a British manager of Marriot properties married to Roland, a womanizer who might be some sort of diplomat. Several other characters come into Sarah’s orbit: the widowed Mrs. Lim, who owns the Glass Kingdom; Pop, the Kingdom’s Mr. Fix-it; a (maybe) blind woman who might or might not own a dog Mali claims is hers; and Goi, a local maid who also dabbles as a spy for anyone who wants to pay for information.
The strength of Osborne’s novel lies with his vivid descriptions of Thai society, Bangkok’s various pulses, and smoldering political intrigue. He also makes us see what Sarah, Ximena, and Natalie only glimpse: smiling exteriors of locals masking deep disdain for privileged, clueless Westerners who somehow believe money insulates them. I imagined parallels between Osborne’s Bangkok and Casablanca during World War II. Let us simply observe that morality, loyalty, and unimpeachable “official” reports were not the principal products of either locale.
All four women are imperiled, though not all realize it. Do we care? Not always. Sarah is very difficult to like. As if being a thief isn’t enough, she’s also vain and incredibly oblivious. On the last score, she’s an out-of-touch mammothrept that some readers may not find a credible character. That’s one reading; another is that she’s the Ugly American in heels; that is, an archetype of a Westerner who thinks she understands more than she does and desperately needs a weatherman to tell her which way the wind is blowing.
Osborne gives us numerous reminders that most of the book’s non-Thai characters are at sea, though their interactions with each are equally murky. In essence, Osborne surrounds shady people with shadier ones. The novel erodes with the monsoon floods when The Glass Kingdom ventures into things such as murder, disappearances, blackmail, multiple double crosses, and a gathering coup. As the Thai heat and sunshine begin to yield to torrential rain, are we to infer that glass kingdoms will be washed away? There is a stochastic quality to the last quarter of The Glass Kingdom because Osborne doesn’t close enough of the gap between the psychological interiority of his characters and the external capers, mysteries, and dangers into which they are immersed.
Call this one three-quarters Graham Greene. This makes it a very good effort, even though The Glass Kingdom doesn’t rise to penthouse level.
Rob Weir
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