The Pacific Between

After the death of his parents in a car accident, 32-year-old Californian Greg Lockland, narrator of this melodramatic debut, finds some disturbing love letters in his despised father's safe-deposit box. The letters are from Lian, a nurse with whom a teenaged Greg had a brief but intense affair when his family lived in Hong Kong. A confused and angry Greg crosses the Pacific to find Lian and the truth about her relationship with his father. Now an opera singer, Lian is as beautiful as ever, and though Greg's suspicions are heightened by Lian's reticence to speak about the past, he finds himself falling for her again despite his new romance back in California with old friend Kate. And-surprise-Lian may not be so available herself. As he stalks Lian around Hong Kong, Greg indulges in tiresome nostalgia and grating self-pity. Forced metaphors, movie-of-the-week dialogue, and purple passages weaken things further, making Greg's journey interminable.