A trip down south turns out to be more life-changing than a family getaway in this passionate story of sexual awakening set in late 1990s Malaysia. The novel is the first in a planned quartet which follows the Lim family and their struggles with racism, gender, sexuality and, most importantly, inter-generational conflict.

It’s early December and the start of the holidays. A math professor, Jack Lim, his wife Sui Ching and their three teenage children are setting off from their home in Kuala Lumpur for a vacation near Johor Bahru. Their destination is a barren farm which Jack’s recently deceased father has bequeathed solely to Sui Ching. The purpose of the trip is to decide what to do with the worthless property and its hapless manager, Fong, who also happens to be Jack’s illegitimate half-brother.

Rural life is hard. An ongoing drought has delivered a poor harvest, further plunging the farm into debt. The nearest town is also bust, mainly as a result of the Asian financial crisis of 1997 which clobbered Malaysia as well as its neighbours. Cloistered in the ramshackle house and stripped of city amenities, the underlying tensions between family members rise to the surface.

Not everyone is dismayed by the change in routine. The youngest son, Jay, is about to turn 17. At home he is a loner, who is bad at sport and casually bullied at school. On the farm, he finds an interest in helping the laborers and in Chuan, Fong’s gruff 19-year-old son, who tantalizingly may reciprocate Jay’s feelings. The fast-paced torment is all the more agonizing as they are billeted in the same bedroom.

For Sui Ching, the vacation provides space to contemplate her loveless marriage. As the new owner, she feels an important sense of dominion, having a stake of something in a land where she feels she is a foreigner. This was Jack’s father’s reasoning too. Arriving from Guangdong as a teenager with no money, it was important for him to build a foundation for his descendents. Knowing Sui Ching was the only person who understood his illogical purchase, he left it to her.
 

The problem of being “other” stretches down the generations. Yin, Jay’s middle sister, is conducting a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend. Lin, the oldest sister, pours scorn on her prospects. The intended is from a wealthy, religious Malay family who will never accept Yin on account of her being less rich and Chinese.

Whereas Jay and Sui Ching find liberty in the countryside, the opposite is true for those who actually live there. Fong, who lost his wife to the bright lights of Singapore, is trapped by financial hardship and realises he “has been in a box all his life, unable to break free.” The same goes for Chuan, who is desperate to escape the dead-end town and its homophobic denizens. Meanwhile Jack, with whom the buck stops, views the farm as an endless money-pit and is keen to offload the burden.

Aw deftly reflects these contradictions in the description of the family’s surroundings. The environment can be beautiful but it is also spoiled. He writes about the river:

A flock of white birds, maybe egrets, were standing on its banks, almost motionless, among the pieces of plastic bags and tin cans caught in the caked-over mud.

  Toughened from manual work and starry-eyed with infatuation, Jay’s heightened emotions overlook the practicalities. To him, the humdrum market of the nearby town is “fresh and magnificent”, rich with possibilities. He envisages making a life with Chuan in the south. That daydream is broken when his parents announce their decision on the farm’s future and, inadvertently, drive the stake between themselves and their children deeper.

Jack and Sui Ching are victims of their own parents’ expectations yet are unable to unshackle their children from a similar predicament. Lina, the oldest daughter, chastises her siblings when they are talking about relationships for not being able to break the chain.

Love should lead to freedom, not obligation—and certainly not suffering. Why can’t you escape your Chinese upbringing that teaches you to accept suffering as a by-product of everything pleasurable?

Although the novel is an exquisite portrait of young love, its main theme is a different kind of highly relatable yearning: to live your life as you wish. In this first instalment, all the characters are imprisoned by custom, expectation, poverty or sometimes bonds of their own making. Whether they can break free will be revealed in the subsequent novels.

Jane Wallace is a Hong Kong-born journalist and author living in London.