Merry-Go-Round: A Novel by Robin Maxwell

A riotous tale, bursting with picaresque energy, and spiced with wicked humor, about a Eurasian Don Juan caught up in a world of missionaries, taipans, and warlords. It is an intimate portrayal of the manners of the age, embodying abundant historical background of considerable interest. Editorial Reviews Review Based on the twilight years of Britain's dominant influence over China, Robin Maxwell's Merry-Go-Round is a comic novel of manners, both historical and Tom Jonesian. -- BC Bookworld, Summer 1990 issue. Capturing my interest from page one I devoured the book in short order. -- Fred Istl, former resident of Tientsin China, now ex-Austrian Consul in Toronto, Canada It wonderfully recaptured for me the smells, dust, and street cries of Tientsin. -- Colin Nielsen, former resident of Tientsin China, now living in Zimbabwe Merry-Go-Round is a wonderfully spicy story of the misadventures of an Eurasian orphan in a world of missionaries and taipans. -- Jane Wilson on her Daily Edition show, CHEK TV May 1 1990. Racy and raunchy, Merry-Go-Round has a wonderful sense of the comic. -- Shura Shihwarg, former resident of Tientsin China, now a writer in London, England From the Author Tientsin (now spelled Tianjin), where I was born of Irish/French parents, stands on the confluence of two great rivers and the Grand Canal. From ancient times it was Peking's (now Beijing's), gateway to the sea. But the Tientsin of my story is that of the Foreign Concessions, where by force of arms eight colonial powers held sway. By the 1930s these concessions had become thriving townships complete with business districts and sleepy suburbs. Victorian propriety was the order of the day, but you did not have to dig deep to find the lusty dissoluteness of a garrison town. Through the grapevine of information provided by family amahs you learned next day who of the straight-laced colonials had fallen into the sea of temptation. And when the Japanese jammed two thousand missionaries, merchants, vagrants, dancing girls into internment camps, the ensuing fun and games almost cried out for piecing together a story such as Merry-Go-Round. From the Back Cover Spurned by the Colonials and disdained by the Chinese, the Eurasian orphan, Marcus Xavier, sets out to trace his origins in the hope of proving he's as much a man as anyone. But when it transpires that his unique blend of genes (a fiery warlord's and a French gentlewoman's) has endowed him with attraction that eclipses even Casanova's, he gets all the proof he needs from a Russian Countess, a Taipan's daughter, a Nazi frau, a Shanghai actress (whose cave is but three doors from Chairman Mao's), a missionary nymphet, a Hollywood star. A WHIMSICAL YARN SPICED WITH WICKED HUMOR whose background, the era of the foreign concessions in CHINA, is vividly painted by Robin Maxwell, a thirty year Vancouver resident, but who grew up in TIENTSIN where nine nations once held sway. About the Author Robin Maxwell, pen name for Desmond Power, was born and raised in Tientsin, North China, of Irish French parents. He had barely completed high school when the Japanese overran Tientsin's foreign concessions on the night of Pearl Harbor. After internment in Pootung, Lunghua, and Weihsien prison camps, he lived variously in Australia, England, New Zealand, and finally in Canada. He is the author of Little Foreign Devil in 1996 (written under his original name Desmond Power) and he has just completed Flambard's Canadian Capers which will be published in the first quarter of 2000. Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter 1 Page 1. Marcus Xavier never knew his father or his mother. He was a mere babe in arms when he first arrived at the orphanage, so the nuns told him. And that was all they ever would tell him. Not another word could he get out of them about his origins, where he sprang from, and so on. When they sensed his questions coming, some would pinch their lips and avert their eyes as they slipped away, others would pat his head and urge him to take comfort in the merciful compassion of the Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea. But he could no more draw comfort from heaven than find it in the evening star. Yet that didn't dampen his curiosity, for he was driven by a strange intuition that the nuns knew a lot more than they were prepared to tell. When one day, he finally asked point-blank: Do you know if my mother is dead or alive? he caught the anguish on Sister Thrse's face, the shock and indignation on Sister Agrippine's. There you go again, the latter admonished. Why don't you follow the example of your little brothers and sisters? You never hear them plaguing us with questions about their families, do you? And Sister was right. In the dormitory, in the refectory, in the playground, never once did he hear the words: 'father' - 'mother' - 'home'. Those fellow orphans of his, they bore their adversity with the cold stoic resignation so characteristic of their race. But then Marcus was no full-blooded Chinese. That, he knew soon as he could reason for himself. He was different. He was a lone rook in a flock of starlings. Though his hair was jet-black like all the others, it was not coarse and straight; it came in an abundance of soft waves and whorls. And his brown eyes were a paler brown, more like amber, and they were flecked with green and gold. And his complexion, unlike the uniform ivory of his fellows, was touched with the soft rose of a ripening peach and with a generous peppering of gingery freckles. No two ways about it, his Han blood had a healthy infusion of Saxon or Celt or something or other. He was a half-breed, a Eurasian. He was what the Chinese liked to call erh chuantze - dual-propagated.