One storyline in this novel concerns a 10-year-old orphan,
Ren, who is looking for a severed finger.
The second storyline is about a young woman, Ji Lin, who possesses the
finger. Ren’s former employer, Dr.
MacFarlane, is dying and has insisted that Ren retrieve the doctor’s missing
finger so that it can be interred with him within 49 days of his death. Thus begins this terrific novel that takes
place in Malaya in the 1930s—before it became the independent nation of
Malaysia. Sinister forces are at work
here, as the number of sudden deaths begins to mount. The author keeps us guessing as to whether
the culprit is a human or something called a weretiger, which is a person in a
tiger’s body. Ren and Ji Lin’s stories
eventually intersect, and they discover that they both dream about Ren’s dead
twin brother Yi. Ji Lin has a sort of
twin of her own—Shin, the stepbrother with whom she shares a birthday. Ji Lin starts to realize that she is
developing a romantic attraction toward Shin, which she is unsuccessful at
stifling. There’s no big surprise here
that Shin has been carrying a torch for her as well. The predictable love story perhaps prevents
this book from being taken seriously by the literary community, but it drew me
in anyway. I was more put off by the
many secrets and misunderstandings between Ji Lin and Shin, which seemed to be
tired devices for keeping the pair apart.
Anyway, what’s not to love about a love story between step-siblings,
with a healthy dose of intrigue and Chinese superstition thrown in? Speculation about a sequel makes me hopeful.
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