PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewSmart and comprehensive ... McGe...comes up with a startling conclusion, backed by meticulous reporting ... McGee has a journalist’s knack for developing scenes with a few curated details ... Sometimes, McGee is too comprehensive. He draws interesting portraits of characters who disappear after a few paragraphs. We do not need to know the full name of the law firm that Apple hired in preparation for a possible bankruptcy in the mid-1990s or even the minutiae of pre-China personnel wrangles, especially when centuries of Chinese history are compressed to less than a page. There are a few Chinese misspellings and miscues—the surname Wang is not, in fact, pronounced quite as \'Wong.\' And it would have been nice to have gotten more perspectives of Chinese people ... But these are quibbles with an otherwise persuasive exposé .
Tash Aw
PositiveThe New York Times Book Review[Aw\'s] His Asia is neither sentimental nor a stereotype ... Aw is a precise stylist; with a few, lean images, he evokes a country on the cusp of change ... But at times the novel feels like a morality tale in which the message is more finely honed than the characters themselves. The migrants, toiling in construction sites or starving in human-smuggling camps, are not given full shape. Even Ah Hock is a mystery ... Perhaps, though, that is the point ... The laborers who built modern Malaysia, Aw reminds us, are destined for obscurity, each layer of cement and heavy load they carry crushing who they really are.
