Marie Conyers McKay. Bloomington, IN: Westbow Press, 2011. 191 pp. (Paperback).
“Hong Kong House” is a collection of four novellas about different people who lived in the same house at different times. The house, once located at 169 Boundary Street, Hong Kong, was torn down in 1999, but its thick walls and unusual layout lingered in the author’s memory, prompting Marie McKay, then a resident of Hong Kong, to wonder what she would learn from this building if walls could talk. Using her intimate knowledge of Hong Kong and anecdotes she heard from people she met when she lived there, McKay produced these stories of the lives of families and individuals who might have inhabited the house.
The author has a gift for storytelling and an amazing eye for detail; her characters are realistic and the plots are engaging. It is easy to get caught up in the stories and forget they are fiction.
McKay now lives in Birmingham.
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