This was a strange book. I have lived and travelled extensively in Asia so I was familiar with the places mentioned and understood the cultural context. The story has 4 protagonists who are loosely linked and 1 antagonist who is the 'I'. I liked the individual stories and the way the story was told. But there was something missing; it didn't quite gel together properly. Some of the characters had more importance and one of the characters seemed superfluous. I did enjoy the book but it wasn't gripping as it felt more like a series of related short stories and the twist ending was obvious once the antagonist turned up physically. It was an interesting read and I liked the fact that there were no western characters in it as many of the stories set in Asia involve westerners going there and their experience.

I enjoyed this, the prose is effortless and there’s something really engaging about the style that keeps you turning the pages. The sense of place, both Shanghai and Malaysia, is vivid and atmospheric. But the plot continually promises more than it delivers and the characters are curiously flat. It is also about a hundred pages too long, what was his editor doing ? We the Survivors is still his masterpiece.

Just depressing and boring. Nothing particularly happened in this book and I didn’t really care about the characters at all either. Nothing good seemed to happen for anyone.

Four and a half stars? I loved this book. It's excellent.

This was yet another novel with a bunch of characters who are only loosely connected to each other. These characters are all Malaysians living in Shanghai, and interestingly, many of them are hiding their Malaysian roots. It was an enjoyable read, and I particularly loved Phoebe and Yinghui, but I felt that the ending was unsatisfactory.

However, points for being a modern lit book that isn't completely grim and bleak and depressing.

I found the book largely depressing, I definitely don't want to visit Shanghai
I thought the ending was good but I couldn't see how all of the characters fitted together. I think I must have missed something

Was forcing myself to get through it sometimes, a slow read. The writing is excellent but something was missing in character development for me. Interesting reading about Shanghai.

I found the characters extremely boring and thus, did not care what happened to them. I wanted to like it, but more than halfway in I still wasn't interested. So I didn't even finish it.