The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

Flatiron Books, 384 pages, $26.99

How many fingers would you need to count the number of books you’ve read which are set in Malaysia? Counting “The Night Tiger,” I count one. I never read “Lord Jim,” which apparently is set in Malaysia, so you very likely are one up on me right from the start.

Yangsze Choo is a “Malaysian writer of Chinese descent.” She was educated in the U.S. and now lives in California, according to her biography. Those two sentences reflect the varied background of a person from Malaysia. The population of Malaysia is primarily “bumiputera,” a mix of many different groups that  arrived a long time ago from other countries and an aboriginal group. There are also many of Chinese and Indian descent. The British colonized the Malay kingdoms in the 18th century, and their influence lasted until 1957. It’s an ethnic soup and also a soup of old religions, superstitions, and myths. It is into this strange brew that Yangsze Choo drops her story, set in 1931.

Ji Lin’s mother was widowed. Their poverty was almost assured. A prosperous tin merchant married the mother and Ji Lin went to live with her newly cobbled family, including the merchant’s son, Shin. Remarkably, Ji Lin and Shin share the same birth day. They grew up supporting one another, but as they grew older, an estrangement crept into their relationship.

Because Ji Lin is a female, her hope to become a doctor never leaves the ground. On the other hand, Shin is accepted into medical school in Singapore and rarely returns home. Ji Lin takes a position as an apprentice seamstress. When Ji Lin’s mother incurs an oppressive mah jong debt, Ji Lin also becomes a dance hall girl to earn more money to pay the debt. That’s dance hall as in a dime-a-dance place, where a man buys a ticket and dances with a “lucky” young woman. It’s humiliating, but Ji Lin’s options are limited.

Sharing Ji Lin’s story (first person) is a third person narrative mostly of Ren, an eleven-year-old houseboy to first one British doctor and then another. Sometimes the narrative follows the second doctor, William Acton, as he encounters increasingly mysterious events.

I would have put the label, “This is not a mystery,” at the top of the page, but in fact there is a mystery. A woman is killed, supposedly by a (wo)man-eating tiger, but there is some doubt expressed by the pathologist. Is there such a tiger terrorizing the little hamlets and villages around Batu Gajah? Or is there a murderer? And if so, is the murderer a Malay or a farang? Actually, there is very little of a traditional mystery path taken in this book. Let’s forget about the skeptical pathologist and the stern police inspector. You don’t even really have to know the inspector’s name. (Jagit Singh.) The inspector is a literary wraith and the pathologist has his best showing at the end but not for being a pathologist.

So, what kind of book is “The Night Tiger”? It’s primarily a romance. Secondarily, it’s a concoction of mystical elements, both Chinese and Malay. And by “Malay,” I mean there are elements that may belong to village tribes and larger ethnicities, and maybe even Greek mythology. Stir, shake, and serve.

In many ways, if it weren’t for the exotic element of the location, this book would be a book version of cotton candy.