Fishing for Tigers

An emotionally gripping and page-turning readSYDNEY MORNING HERALD

Six years ago, Mischa Reese left her abusive husband and suffocating life in California and reinvented herself in steamy, chaotic Hanoi. In Vietnam, she finds satisfying work and enjoys a life of relative luxury and personal freedom. Thirty-five and single, Mischa believes that romance and passion are for teenagers; a view with which her cynical, promiscuous expat friends agree.

But then a friend introduces Mischa to his visiting eighteen-year-old son. Cal is a strikingly attractive Vietnamese-Australian boy, but hes resentful of his father, and of the nation which has stolen him away. His beauty and righteous idealism awaken something in Mischa and the two launch into an affair that threatens Mischas friendships and reputation and challenges her sense of herself as unselfish and good.

Set among the louche world of Hanois expatriate community, Fishing for Tigers is about a woman struggling with the morality of finding peace in a war-haunted city, personal fulfilment in the midst of poverty and sexual joy with a vulnerable youth.

Fishing for Tigers is a sharply observed novel, both page-turning and thought-provoking. It vividly evokes the particular beauty of Hanoi, the intoxication of being a stranger, and the danger of desire.NEWTOWN REVIEW OF BOOKS