Adrify in the Las Vegas of Asia
- Book: The Ballad of a Small Player
- Location: Macau (Macao)
- Author: Lawrence Osborne
One of the books I have most enjoyed reading over the last few years is Beautiful Animals by Lawrence Osborne, a hauntingly vivid story set largely on the Greek island of Hydra.
Osborne has been called ‘the bastard child of Patricia Highsmith and Graham Greene‘ and I can think of no finer a heritage for a writer than that. The author’s own life is Greene-like, education at Cambridge and Harvard leading to a nomadic writing life around the world, including from his current Bangkok residence.
The Ballad of a Small Player, published in 2014, is a novella that thrusts the reader into the gaudy, sweaty, smoke-filled gambling dens of Macau. ‘The Las Vegas of Asia’ was once a Portuguese colony but is now most definitely Chinese and, according to protagonist Lord Doyle ‘is one of the most secretive places on earth.’
And that matters, because Lord Doyle is on the run after embezzling the life savings of a wealthy client. But far from having aristocratic blood, his father was a vacuum cleaner salesman from Haywards Heath, ‘that empty and tomblike place in which only the railway line is a source of life after midnight’.
Doyle lurches from one casino to the next, winning and losing fortunes, borrowing from fellow con artists and sleeping with whores. His surreal existence is laid bare by the author, and once we understand Doyle’s troubled history and addictive relationship with gambling, we know his inevitable destination.
A brief chance of redemption is offered by call-girl Dao-Ming, but after a few restorative days with her the siren call of the tables drowns out the hope that she offers.
‘I felt she had expected me to steal her money all along, and she wouldn’t have minded. I felt a little more confident and rational, less confused, as I swept down the hill and passed for the last time through the restaurants.’
The Ballad of a Small Player reeks of desperation, loss and the worst human characteristics. I can only hope that Doyle’s emptyness and addictions are conjured more from the writer’s imagination than from his own experiences.
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