HUNGRY GHOSTS

In her American fiction debut, Australian writer Johnson—the author of four novels and a memoir—offers a racy, intelligent tale of friendship and ambition. Rachel Gallagher and Anne-Louise Buchan, both aspiring artists who knew each other in high school, meet again while working for a fashion magazine in Sydney. Though they couldn't be more different—Rachel is careful and proper, Anne-Louise carefree and irreverent—they become close friends, going off to London together and staying in touch even when their lives diverge. While Anne-Louise is the artier (and less stable) of the two, Rachel turns out to be the artist, Anne-Louise becoming an administrator for a Hong Kong arts center and joining the enclave's "ghost," or non-Asian, community. Also in Hong Kong is Martin Bannister, a handsome and meticulously groomed futures trader, one of Hong Kong's "golden bachelors." Martin's past—his runaway father, his spoiled and willful mother, his years in New Zealand—have left him a cache of suppressed anger, which he unleashes in sadistic encounters in Hong Kong, Bangkok and Macao. In time, he crosses paths with Anne-Louise and then with Rachel, testing their friendship and their characters. Johnson narrates all this in forceful prose, swiftly summarizing her characters' lives. The tantalizingly short chapters shift point of view from Rachel to Anne-Louise to Martin. Rachel, who tells her story in the first person, becomes the most developed and complex of the three. Though Johnson veers dangerously close to melodrama (her good-looking men are always "dashing"), her crafty storytelling—not to mention her unblinking descriptions of sadism—keep the reader turning the pages of this lively novel. (Apr. 9)

FYI:Johnson's memoir, A Better Woman, will be published simultaneously in a Washington Square hardcover edition (ISBN 0-7434-3296-7; $24).