Review: Racy, highly entertaining, but unfinished
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 27, 2013
Somewhere about 2011 the military in Myanmar began to release its hold and open the country for business. Two entrepreneurs realized that there were real opportunities here in property development, after all a rapidly growing economy needed places to stay out of the rain while growing. The two were wildly different in nature. One was all over the place, rushing from deal to deal, meeting to meeting, never staying long enough to see anything through. He was the hare. The other was wheelchair bound, a careful architect, who knew what had to be done. He was the tortoise, and the two formed Hare and Tortoise Inc. This is a relatively short book that follows their efforts at property development.The book is well-written in a fast racy style that matches the predominant focus on Hare.  I have actually been in an entrepreneurial relationship and recognize Hare, although not as extreme as this hare. Accordingly, I think the author has genuinely captured the essence of Hare, at the risk of some exaggeration. I rather suspect Tortoise is also exaggerated. Whether Myanmar is properly represented, I cannot say. What the story shows is an almost journalistic account of a strange sequence of events, while capturing the essential nature of a hare, who has to keep going, at the risk of thoroughly annoying necessary allies. This, mixed with the corrupt cronyism inherent in the power base of the generals ensures, well, you will have to read all about it. Because the book is so short, I felt it was missing quite a bit. There are characters such as goanna and tortette who are there, but why, and what did they do? The ending is also premature. Quite a lot must have followed that ending, and from experience, that is where character really comes into play. The book is a little like the first draft of a Shakespeare play that suddenly ends about two-thirds the way through Act 2. The book is well worth reading, especially if interested in entrepreneurship, it has some genuinely dynamic material in it, but the author walks away when the interesting events stop, but before coming to the character interactions that follow. If the reader were to be interested in property development in Myanmar, then this may be sufficient, but the objective in most books is to engage the reader with the characters, and surely those readers would like to know what happened to Hare and Tortoise.