Novel set in 1890s Malaya and present day Hampshire

26th August 2021

The Parasol Flower by Karen Quevillon, novel set in 1890s Malaya and present day Hampshire.

The Parasol Flower is a debut novel by Canadian Karen Quevillon, and it is a cracker. Set partly in the royal town of Kuala Kangsa, Malaya and partly in Hampshire, it documents how Nancy, a PhD student from America, studying in Paris but in England for a short break, becomes fascinated by the life of Hannah, an English artist living in Malaya over 100 years previously. By chance, Nancy comes across one of Hannah’s illustrations (a picture of a Parasol Flower) in a book – finds it quite beautiful – and want to know more about the artist. What follows is a detective story as Nancy discovers she can discern very little about Hannah or her work. She seems to have been written out of the records and her work has disappeared.

The present day storyline is complimented by time shift revelations about Hannah’s life in Kuala Kangsa. Hannah was supposed to be the loyal little wife of a British official in colonial Malaya. She was supposed to mix with the other wives and engage in pointless chit chat and ‘good works’. But she didn’t. She was a free spirit who wished to go into the jungle accompanied by a Sikh policeman (what scandal!) and paint what she saw. Her husband and most of the colonial hierarchy were appalled by her behaviour. But she was protected and mentored by Eva and Charles Peterborough, a somewhat strange and academic couple equally outside the behavioural norms of colonial Malaya. The Peterboroughs, in fact, had authored The Descent of Woman: On the Role of Sexual Selection in the Origination and Continued Creation of Femininity in which Nancy had discovered the picture of The Parasol Flower.

Nancy struggles to find any other reference to this amazing flower, and wonders whether it was in fact mythical as rumoured (drawn from Hannah’s imagination or legend) or whether Hannah had indeed come across it on one of her excursions into the jungle. The search for The Parasol Flower – both the painting itself, if it had survived, and the the flower itself if it ever existed – are the central themes of the book. Nancy is obsessed by finding the answers.

In TripFiction terms, the location setting of the book is absolutely on point. Karen has clearly done a great deal of research into colonial life in Malaya in the 1890s, and the story feels entirely real. The pressure to conform, the way in which the native population is treated, the trials and tribulations everyone faced, all ring very true.

The Parasol Flower is recommended.

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