Kingdom of Make-Believe: A Novel of Thailand

From Publishers Weekly
Drawing on his Vietnam experience and on his 17 years in Asia, Barrett (Memoirs of a Bangkok Warrior) has tried to create a novel of one man's midlife crisis, an adventure story, a exploration of Thailand's exotic delights and an inquiry into the aftermath of the Vietnam War. But the narrative collapses amid conflicting goals and unexamined stereotypes. The hero of sorts is divorced, middle-aged New York editor Brian Mason, once an army linguist in Vietnam, where his brother Paul (he believes) died in combat. Brian receives a vague, importunate letter from Paul's Thai widow, Suntharee, urging him to visit Thailand and help her with an unspecified problem. Brian, who was once in love with Suntharee himself, uses a business trip to the Orient as an excuse to meet Suntharee. After they tour the ruins at Ayudhya, they make love, though Brian is disturbed to discover that the real author of that letter was not Suntharee but her troubled, estranged daughter, Nalin, a former art student working as a go-go-dancer/stripper at the Horny Tiger bar in Bangkok. Nalin calls him "Uncle Brian"; he dubs her "Little Tadpole." Soon they're sleeping together, too. Then Brian falls in with seedily menacing expatriate conspirators, some of whom may have engineered his brother's murder 20 years ago. A subtext about the attractiveness of submissive Oriental women colors Brian's feelings toward Nalin: "He found her allure most compelling when she dressed in traditional Thai dress and wore no makeup; when she seemed to look and act and think more like a traditional Thai." She, and other Bangkok beauties, seem to him "impossibly exotic." When Brian's search for romance and his search for his brother come together in the hunt for an opium warlord, the story loses its credibility in a clumsy authorial revelation. (July) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


January magazine, 2000
Sharp, often poetic and pleasantly twisted...tautly written...compelling...a very considerable writing talent.


Laughing Bear Newsletter, 2000
Barrett is a powerful storyteller who has a feeling for language that's lacking in many contemporary novels.


Today's Librarian 2000
Barrett spins a tightly packed tale, part murder mystery, part love story with seductive Thaland in a leading role.


Denis Gray, Chief of Bureau, AP, Bangkok
Kingdom of Make-Believe captures a slice of Thailand as it really is--and was.


Midwest Book Review 2000
An exciting thriller...A gripping mystery documenting Dean Barrett as a writer in full possession of his craft.


Indochina Travel
Kingdom of Make-Believe is a captivating thriller describing the mystery and beauty of Thailand.


From the Inside Flap
The main character of the novel (Brian Mason) is a New York publisher who once served in Thailand during the Vietnam War and whose brother was killed in battle in Vietnam. A plea for help from his brother's Thai widow sends him back to Thailand where he finds that the nostalgic portrait he carried of Thailand Past bears little resemblance to reality. Little by little, he begins to uncover deception - both past and present, to learn the truth about his brother's death and to better understand his own character. As the publisher is entering middle-age and becoming more dissatisfied with his job and situation, he welcomes the urgent request from his brother's widow to return to Thailand. It fits in perfectly with his own plans for signing up Asian novelists writing on their own countries. As he was also in love with the woman himself before she chose to marry his brother, his emotions while returning to Thailand for the first time in nearly a quarter of a century run high. On the way Brian stops in Hong Kong to check out the colony's printing facilities, and unexpectedly meets his former American girlfriend from San Francisco State College (with flashbacks to the 1968-69 riots). In Thailand, his brother's widow tells Brian that she sent him no letter but asks him to help her daughter (by her first marriage to a Thai husband). Brian remembers the girl as an adorable three-year-old, but she is now a 25-year-old college student who suddenly quit school to become a go-go dancer on Bangkok's Patpong Road. Brian meets the daughter and learns that it was she, not her mother, who wrote to him. Despite his best efforts, he falls in love with her; a situation complicated by the unexpected arrival in Bangkok of his former American girlfriend. Brian eventually learns that his brother was killed not by communist soldiers but by an American-run drug ring he had refused to join. He also learns of the guilt of those he had befriended and even loved. By the end of the novel, he has come to terms with himself, ready to return to New York. Scenes in the novel range from Manhattan's Washington Square Park to a typhoon-ravaged Hong Kong to Thailand's notorious nightlife and warlord betrayals inside the Golden Triangle. Although the novel has elements of an exotic thriller, it is, at heart, the story of a man coming to terms with reality and with himself.


About the Author
Dean Barrett first arrived in Thailand as a Chinese linguist during the Vietnam War. He was stationed with the Army Security Agency in Bangkok and Taipei. He has lived in Asia for over 20 years. His other novels on Thailand are Memoirs of a Bangkok Warrior and the forthcoming Skytrain to Murder. He has written hundreds of articles on Asia and his novels set in China are Hangman's Point (historical thriller/mystery) and Mistress of the East (historical erotica). Mr. Barrett specializes in writing on the late Ch'ing Dynasty and has written Barracoon, set in 1862 China, and Fragrant Harbour, a musical set in 1857 Hong Kong (music: Ed Linderman). His novel starring a Chinese detective from Beijing in New York City is Murder in China Red.


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Kingdom of Make-Believe captures a slice of Thailand as it really is—and was. The novel could only have been written by one who has experienced the Kingdom—and felt the pangs of seeing its magic mirrors crack and shatter. (Denis Gray, Chief of Bureau, AP, Bangkok) — Denis Gray


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