The conquering white male, guiltily plundering, seduced by exoticism and abundance but never quite sure that he’s not just the clueless foreigner being taken for a ride: so we have Tony Parson’s pugnacious hero Bill, clad in his designer suit. He is the ambitious corporate lawyer, billing for every hour he breathes, hoping to ‘make partner’ faster in Shanghai than in London but of course accidentally finding ‘partner’ instead in the form of the alarmingly beautiful but endearingly goofy Li Jin Jin, despite the existence of Becca and Holly, his picture-in-wallet perfect blonde family.
The half-enchanted Western writer, of course, treads a well-travelled road, but My Favourite Wife is a very knowing update. Disappointed by ‘the jewel box’ of the Shanghai skyline, Parsons has Becca, with her highlights tumbling into her Joseph Conrad, hankering after ‘the first sigh of the East on my face’.
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