Handover by Paul Blaney Review

It's 1997 and three very different expatriate Britons are living and working in Hong Kong. Sally, a sophisticated, thirty-something magazine editor, finds her life plagued by a ruthless bully. Tess, an idealistic young graduate, embarks on an unlikely office romance. And Rob, the most recently arrived of the three, is haunted by an enigmatic ex-lover. As the date of the Handover draws closer, and each of the three falls further under the spell of their adopted city, their lives criss-cross and start spinning out of control. July 1st, dawn of the reunification with mainland China, will find one in prison awaiting trial for armed assault, one in disillusion and deep denial, and the third floating face-down in the waters off Macau. Handover, a vivid, cinematic new novella by Paul Blaney, writer in residence at Rutgers University, peels back the skin of expatriate Hong Kong to uncover vengeance, betrayal, and madness.

Paul Blaney is a forty-something British short story writer who lives in Pennsylvania and teaches at Rutgers, New Brunswick. His novella, Handover, is forthcoming from Typhoon Press (Hong Kong) in 2012. His short fictions, "The Restaurant" and "North & South," appeared in Issue #27 of The Cafe Irreal.

My Thoughts:
The handover ceremony of Hong Kong in 1997 officially marked the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China
Handover is a book of three separate novellas about three expats living in Hong Kong just prior and leading up to this event. Very interesting how the author intertwines the lives of these three people. Hong Kong is a bustling city with a myriad of people from all walks of life, the rich and the poor. Tess, moves to Hong Kong for change and has an office romance that goes awry, Rob goes to Hong Kong after his lover goes missing and he starts seeing her everywhere and then there is Sally who is being charged with murder. Of the three stories I found Rob's to be the strangest one.. I was left not quite knowing what happened there.    This book was a fast read and well worth it. I enjoyed it..
I received a copy of this book for review and was not monetarily compensated for my review.

Signal 8 Press