The final major character introduced, Bruce, is a denizen of London's deprived East End. His father had been a servant with some affluent families, and from this, his mother had acquired a subtle form of social snobbery. At the end of this section Bruce, who has set up as a hairdresser, meets Francesca, one of his customers. Now all the characters were ready to interact, painted puppets in the author's gaudy marionette box.
They all meet up in Ricky's "Spider's Den," an apartment where almost anything can, and usually does, happen. This turns out to be a world consisting largely of prostitution, cocaine-use and -- inevitably -- loss of illusions. (The book's subtitle is "A novel of Innocence Corrupted").
The second half of the novel consists of fast-changes from one character to another, postcards to the reader from the edge of their experiences together. It's a lengthy sequence of nightclubs, drugs, sexual musical chairs and character vignettes. Some of these pasted-together fragments only consist of a single sentence.
Others arrive on the scene -- Maggie, Haylee, and towards the end, even the author herself shows up. Anis has an affair with Zeenat and gets hooked on heroin, while Ricky makes money buying and selling restaurants and, at least partly, avoiding the tax man.
This book, then, is essentially an attempted blockbuster and, as I've unfortunately come to expect from such productions, much of it is vivid but shallow, full of cliches about different national types, and, in the final analysis brash, like an over-colorful inflight magazine, and more than a touch predictable.
There's one more thing. I happen to know that twins in Bali are traditionally viewed as bringing extremely bad luck. The unfortunate parents who produce them have to go to excessive, and usually very expensive, lengths to mitigate their misfortune. Even their houses can be pulled down to dissipate the spirits who brought such a perceived disaster upon them.
Such a traditional belief doesn't appear to have any bearing on the Balinese twins who appear in this story. I should, perhaps, have taken more notice of this at the start.
I know that this book is likely to find many readers. But reviewers, like other people, can't easily change their tastes. And so I must end by saying that I cannot, in all honesty, recommend it.
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