The Man in the Wooden Hat

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Filth (Failed In London, Try Hong Kong) is a successful lawyer when he marries Elisabeth in Hong Kong soon after the War. Reserved, immaculate and courteous, Filth finds it hard to demonstrate his emotions. But Elisabeth is different - a free spirit. She was brought up in the Japanese Internment Camps, which killed both her parents, but left her with a lust for survival and an affinity with the Far East. No wonder she is attracted to Filth's hated rival at the Bar - the brash, forceful Veneering. Veneering has a Chinese wife and an adored son - and no difficulty whatsoever in demonstrating his emotions . . .

How Elisabeth turns into Betty and whether she remains loyal to stolid Filth or swept up by caddish Veneering, make for a page-turning plot, in a perfect novel which is full of surprises and revelations, as well as the humour and eccentricites for which Jane Gardam's writing is famous.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Edward Feathers, aka Old Filth (an acronym for "Failed in London, Try Hong Kong"), Gardam's proper lawyer and judge, is back for a second outing (after Old Filth), this time as seen through the eyes of his wife, Betty. Lately returned from her wartime work at Bletchley Park and now a regular among the expat community of Hong Kong, Betty is cocooned in comfortable gentility with Filth, a loving but distant husband largely preoccupied with his legal life. After a childhood spent in a Japanese labor camp, she is now unable to have children and largely unfocused; her brief premarital fling with Filth's arch enemy, Terry Veneering, creates an enduring bond with him and his young son, Harry, who fills a void in her life. Verdict Admirers of Old Filth will be delighted to discover the backstory of his marriage and to renew acquaintances with a dear friend. Those meeting him and Mrs. Feathers for the first time will surely want more. An elegant portrait of an old-world marriage. Highly recommended.-Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Octogenarian Gardam's latest, told with quintessentially British humor, bookends the two-time Whitbread winner's earlier novel, Old Filth, about a barrister who becomes a renowned lawyer in the Far East whose nickname, Filth, speaks volumes: failed in London, try Hong Kong. This book concentrates on the courtship and marriage of Filth and his wife, Betty, and then flits across the years to their final days, revealing a backstory of secret trysts and desires that each concealed from the other during their long, childless marriage. Filth and Betty's early days in Hong Kong tingle with the weight of the past: Betty spent the war starving in a Japanese internment camp in Shanghai; Filth talks "in his sleep in the passionate Malay of his childhood." The supporting characters in their steamy, crowded world are a bizarre lot (a card-flinging Chinese dwarf among them). Gardam's prose is witty and precise, and the hole in the middle of the story is obviously to be filled by reading (or rereading) Old Filth. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Readers who enjoyed Gardam's Old Filth (2006) will welcome her new novel. A companion and an amplification rather than a sequel, it tells much of the same story, but from a different angle. Whereas jurist Sir Edward Feathers (aka Filth, for Failed in London, Try Hong Kong ) was at the heart of the earlier work, here his wife, Betty, takes center stage, and we learn much more about their courtship and wedding in Hong Kong and their 50-year marriage. At the novel's end, we revisit Filth in old age, retired in Dorset and a widower wrestling with his past. Although the new book offers many rewards with its combination of sharp humor and deep humanity, readers who come upon it without having read Old Filth may be mystified at times. Albert Ross, for example, the dwarf who played such a pivotal role in Filth's life in the previous book, might seem an inexplicable presence here. Be sure to recommend the two books in tandem.--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2009 Booklist