Fixer Chao
   Han Ong
  2001 Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY
   ISBN: 0374155755


A Filipino street hustler meets a disreputable writer & the great Feng Shui scam is born. Taking on the persona of Master Chao, a revered Feng Shui master from Hong Kong & his publicist, Paulinha & Shem C spread a distorted version of this Eastern holistic philosophy among the New York elite with hubristic, entertaining & disquieting results.

Fixer Chao is quite an original. Young William Narciso Paulinha, a disillusioned street man with responsibilities & a stainless steel opinion about everyone, talks up a storm from the beginning; letting us in on his rootless, mixed youth & some of his American dreams.

When Paulinha encounters an enigmatic older white man, a wild-haired recently divorced & deeply embittered New York Jew, sparks fly, honey drips & Paulinha is reeled into the making of a hugely humorous, scathingly keen scam. They're going to bring Master Chao over from Hong Kong & he will dispensed this new-fangled fad called Feng Shui amid the gullible upper-crust.

Shem C, coming out of a carefully constructed life & an equally carefully arranged marriage of money & status, is now broke & very, very hungry. Hunger is a keen carrot & Shem C has thought up one fine farce to ensure financial success. He needs Paulinha & sets about enticing this wary, street smart hustler into his carefully constructed scam.

Fixer Chao is written like a journal. On & on it reads, huge paragraphs, no quotation marks & lively interjections. Paulinha tells his tale with wry self-deprecatory asides, simple reported actions & unvarnished unflattering insights - even when he is contracted to fix someone's house badly.

It doesn't take long for Paulinha & Master Chao to meld into one philosophy & philosophy is what Fixer Chao is all about; slippery slopes, mealy-mouth mores & elusive ethics gallop across the pages & get everybodys' knickers in a twist - even Paulinha's & for a street hustler to get the queasies - well duh!(as Paulinha is wont to say).

A curiously, unadorned & yet infinitely elaborate read. Did I like Fixer Chao? Here & there - very much. Overall? Not really, then I don't live in a city & I don't follow fads; rube though I am, I do recognize a hearty feast of characters, humor & philosophy when it's set before me & Han Ong has served up a startling first effort.
(05/20/01)

Rebecca