Bamboo Grove by Romy Wood
ISBN: 978-0-9560125-1-74 October 2010£9.99
A pseudo-Buddhist monk, an illegal immigrant, a teenager with precarious mental health and a quixotic pair of young businessmen chancing their luck. All of them intricately, messily bound by the unique and rather dubious organization that is Eastern Vision. The empire has one foot in the seedier realms of metaphysical Surrey and the other amongst the slums and skyscrapers of Bangkok. From faux-Eastern objets to real estate, client-centred sperm-donation to gypsy magic, the tangled fortunes of Eastern Vision go from strength to strength and back again.
Yingyang, first child of the dysfunctional troupe, tells us the story; from the day her mother Jessica tripped on a paving slab and never looked back, to her own quirky upbringing and island exile. In Bangkok, enigmatic entrepreneur Bristol takes the helm and in London, Romanian refugee Pippa claws her dainty way up the ladder to exploit the company's potential for her own ends. Moses, who prefers not to mention that he was born in Surrey, surrounds himself in mystic exoticism, building his own outrageous business-within-a-business. As they battle for control – of the company, of each other and of themselves – they hurtle towards an end none of them could have predicted.
A black comedy about sex, financial boom and bust, corruption, cultural collision, fertility and altruism.
Buzzes with insight and imagination... big themes... [of] environmental responsibility and escape, mental illness and the policing of joy. A very fine debut. Richard Gwyn, author of The Colour of a Dog Running Away
An unusual, engaging and unpredictable novel packed with a cosmopolitan cast of colourful characters. Lindsay Clarke, author of The Chymical Wedding
Romy Wood taught drama in comprehensive schools for ten years. She works as an associate Lecturer for the Open University. This novel is informed by her experiences of Romania and Thailand, where she has friends and family, as it is by Romy's life as a woman with Bipolar Disorder. She lives with her husband and three children in Cardiff.
Talking to Romy Wood
Alcemi: Most of Bamboo Grove is set in London and Bangkok. What is your connection with Thailand and how does it relate to your themes?
Romy: I have family in Bangkok, and I love going to visit them. My Chinese-Thai sister-in-law was endlessly patient in showing me round and answering questions when I was writing the novel. She's very East meets West – her religions are Buddhism and Monty Python. Bangkok is a city of contrasts, of wealth and poverty, ancient and modern, and there's a kind of chaotic freedom in the air that makes ex-pats think they can do and have whatever they like. So that's where the idea for 'Eastern Vision' came from.
A: Romanian refugee Pippa is a vivid character. What drew you to create her?
R: I think she's in fact a refugee from another story, who's settled in Bamboo Grove! I wrote a story set in Romania just after the revolution, and Pippa must have been forming in my subconscious at that time, because although she wasn't in that story, she appeared on the page when I was writing Bamboo Grove, and she dug her toes in and wouldn't budge. She's a feisty young woman; she escapes to the UK as a teenager with her brother, who doesn't survive the experience intact and falls prey to addiction and crime, but she makes a success of her own life. She's impulsive like Jessica, but she's tougher than her and doesn't have mental illness to contend with, so she's less dependent on other people. When you think what the Romanian people went through under the dictatorship of Ceaucescu – their creativity was completely suffocated – it's incredible that the country has risen from the ashes through inspiration, determination, and a willingness to adapt and learn. Pippa embodies that strength, and through what she achieves back home, she spreads her wealth and success.
A: You seem interested in women who have been displaced. How does your novel explore this?
R: Each of the women in the story has her own struggle; even Jessica's mother has her awful husband to contend with. But, unlike Maureen, Jessica, Pippa and Yingyang take control of their situation and make choices. Jessica goes to Bangkok, Pippa escapes Ceaucescu's Romania, and you will see what decisions Yingyang makes when you read the novel! And there's Linda, who gets dragged to Bangkok with Bristol, but learns how to handle herself during the novel. So, yes, they're displaced, but they're not victims.
A: How has the global financial crisis affected the world that Bamboo Grove inhabits?
R: The global crisis inevitably had a big impact on real estate and tourism, but in general the Asian economies have been growing strongly again in recent months. The luxury real estate market and the resort locations, both of which feature in the book, reached a peak in terms of demand and prices in 2008, and probably won't reach those heights again for some time. So there is a knock-on effect there, I think, though the financial crisis was relatively short lived in Asia.
Thailand has also been affected by political crisis in the struggle between the current government and Thaksin. Things are still developing on that front, and we haven't seen the last of that unrest. Television news worldwide in the spring last year was showing footage of the yellow shirts fighting the red shirts, and I imagine tourism was affected by that as much or more so than the financial situation. Having said that, Thailand's resorts are as idyllic as it gets and the addictive wickedness of Bangkok and Pattaya are pretty resilient to all kinds of economic and financial crises. Sun and sex are powerful entities...
A: Environmental and trade ethics interest you as themes in the novel. Does the recession make it less likely these will be respected?
R: Investment in Thailand is becoming more complex now as environmentalists have grown in strength there and they're prepared to battle against development projects they see as damaging. In terms of ethical trading, there are baddies in Bangkok as there are in any capital city. And most of us have so little idea where our clothes really come from, or our handbags, jewellery, food or any of the things we buy. Back in the nineties, when we were busy rushing aid to Romania after the revolution, a lot of the clothes we sent over had Made in Romania on the label, which says it all. The ideal situation is for the people steering development and investment to join hands with environmentalists and ethical campaigners - like at the end of the novel, when Pippa takes the helm!
A: You are open about the fact that you experience Bipolar Disorder. Does this help or hinder the writing process for you, and did it make it easy for you to capture Jessica?
R: I can't actually disentangle being a writer from being bipolar at the moment; perhaps this will change with time. I write ferociously when I'm heading for hypomania, and also when I'm sinking into depression. At the absolute extremes of mood and energy, it can be that I'm not able to write coherently, but I write on the way there. Unfortunately, a major part of the management of bipolar disorder involves managing behaviour, and I've had to promise my family I won't stay up writing all night and that I'll stop to eat and drink and generally behave myself. All this puts the reins on my writing, but it also stops me heading for a crisis, so mainly I keep my promises! Jessica isn't particularly autobiographical, though I did of course draw on experience of depression, mania, medication and so on. In fact the seeds of the novel came from asking myself the question: what on earth must it be like to have a bipolar mother? (I have asked my children this, but they just roll their eyes.)
A: What are you working on next?
R: I'm really excited by my next project, and I'm scribbling away... It's another novel, much less autobiographical than anything I've written before, and it's darkly comic again. 'Darkly comic' seems to come naturally to me; perhaps one day I'll do serious, or light-hearted, but for now this is how the words come out...
Back to the Future