And that is cause for celebration. In ancient China, married women who committed adultery were trussed up in a pig's basket and drowned. The details are vividly imprinted in Syn's mind when she relives a past incarnation as a wife who suffers the cruel fate. In this life, Syn is single but still caught up in an affair. A Chinese illegal immigrant in Australia, she thinks she has it made when she becomes the boss's mistress.
Life's never so straightforward.
And Ng, a Sydney-based gynecologist, does it with some elegance, using the English equivalent of Chinese allusion to describe the couple's couplings. In Clouds, she has an insightful novel on love and passion that transcends borders. But the tale is also about the ties that bind parent and child, husband and wife. It is about a Chinese family in Australia, whose good life contrasts starkly with that of the teeming millions in China. Syn had been one of the students who jammed into Tiananmen Square in an attempt to frogmarch democracy into China in 1989, but when she returns to her homeland, it is as a visitor, protected by her Australian passport and tour group.