'Why I wrote Thai Girl'
by the author
There are loads of rubbishy novels based around sad old farang grease-balls, mafia types and gangsters celebrating how easy it is to get laid in the sleazy back ends of Bangkok. Do we really need another of this genre and is this what Thai Girl is all about?
It's often said that inside everyone there's at least one book, though if so, that's probably where most of them should remain. I had the chance to give birth to mine and, as I was wintering in Thailand, the setting for the novel was inevitable. Travelling around the country with my notebook collecting characters and scraps of conversations, a story began to form in my head.
But what finally provoked me into writing was Alex Garland's novel, The Beach. Supposedly set in Thailand, (though written when he was in the Philippines), the book's sales success is said to be based on word of mouth and it's exotic setting. The story is action-packed with an improbable plot and hundreds of characters with silly names; it has been well rewarded with a truly awful movie starring Leonardo De Crapio. Controversially, while shooting on location they made a terrible mess of Koh Phi Phi Leh, planting plastic palm trees everywhere... though I did love the scenery, especially the French girl who played the female lead.
But what irritated me most of all was the fact that The Beach could have been set on a tropical island almost anywhere. It said absolutely nothing about Thailand and there were no Thai characters in it, except for a few gun-toting gangsters who despatched many of the remaining cardboard cut-outs that had not already been eaten by sharks. The book worked as an adventure story, but in my view, not as a backpacker novel. A satisfying travel novel should be both about travellers and the country they find themselves in.
Thus goaded, I wondered if I could write something different with strong Thai characters and which made the Thai setting pivotal; not just an exotic cliche? but a place inhabited by real people that was fundamental to the story. In particular I wanted the book to challenge readers to think about Thailand and its people and perhaps to learn something from it.
But that was not to be an easy assignment. Dickens was good at social comment, but as the novice author of Thai Girl, I have little idea if I have succeeded in my aims for the novel which I now present to you. (Click on Readers Forum and tell me what you think the book is all about.)
I love Thailand, and issues such as poverty, and tourism and commercial sex trouble me; it is so easy for visitors to exploit the Thai people. I therefore hope Thai Girl does not look like another trashy Bangkok bar story. It is about well-meaning young people taking a life-check and briefly travelling through Thailand and is not about the older hoodlums of the typical sex novel. Mass tourism brings visitors of all sorts here in large numbers and they are bound to have an impact. Perhaps that is what the novel is about. What do you think?
"Thai Girl is just another novel exploiting vulnerable women for personal gain, pandering to immature male fantasies. The author's moralising stance makes it even more nauseating." Click on Readers Forum and have your say.
