Philip Cunningham is an American writer who has lived in Beijing, Bangkok and Tokyo, among other Asian places. He has just published a novel called Peacock Hotel. This is from the blurb:

California-born John Joyce returns to Bangkok on a quest to recapture his lost youth. At the Peacock Hotel, he tries to rekindle things with his first love, the unhappily married, aristocratic Joy, against the advice of his fun-loving friend Sombat. At a protest rally, John runs into Bun, a sassy activist from the slum, who challenges him to live up to his idealistic chatter. Torn between his desire to save the world and his craving for the good life, the American pursues both until disaster strikes. At last, he goes off to the countryside to confront the realities of existence.

LINKS:
You can buy Peacock Hotel here and here.

Below is a review of the book from the Kyoto Journal.

TIME-RELEASE KARMA

Peacock Hotel: A Novel of Bangkok
Philip J. Cunningham, Blackberry Press
Thailand 2004, 390pp www.dcothai.com

Reviewed by Ken Rodgers, Kyoto Journal

Philip Cunningham’s taut and memorable first novel deals with a coming of age revisited, taking on big ideas and exploring them convincingly, in a setting that encompasses the highs and lows of Bangkok society.

Peacock Hotel centers on John Joyce, returning to Thailand in his early 30s with some unresolved issues dating back to his college days. First, there’s his relationship with Joy, a ‘hi-so’ former sweetheart and soon-to-be-divorcee, who believes that life is simply a matter of fate, (“Joy had been a confidante, a soul mate, the woman who wanted to marry him, the woman he wanted to marry. But her guardians kept her away. To her parents he wasn’t Thai enough; to her social set he wasn’t rich enough; and to her jealous fiancé, he wasn’t dead enough”). There’s also a major karmic entanglement resulting from an uncharacteristic brief encounter with a country girl out in Buriram province, weighing increasingly on his conscience. And Sombat, his former host-family bro, the pragmatic ride-‘em Thai cowboy, still can’t understand why John isn’t interested in massage parlour pay-for-play.

Only on encountering Bun, a self-assured survivor and single mother from the slums, who campaigns for squatter’s rights and sex workers’ dignity, does John begin to outgrow the personal mythology of his past.

Almost unconsciously he embarks on a gradual healing process, learning to reappraise his life, his objectives, and his friends. It’s no coincidence that this maturing process takes place within a cultural setting that is both highly systematized and at the same time elementally chaotic. Bangkok too is in conflict with itself, resolving a new identity. (The hotel of the title, an enclave of privilege representing John’s most treasured memories, together with its luxurious garden and neighboring shantytown, is about to be replaced by a ‘five-star parking lot’ and mall.

Peacock Hotel can be read on various levels, holding value for diverse readership. The author has a journalist’s sharp eye for detail, and the story swings easily between past and present, unobtrusively debating the nature of true morality, and referencing the key Buddhist principle of karma “the sum of things he did and didn’t do, the list of people he helped and hurt along the way, the merit he made and unmade”. Understanding that our actions create an interactive web of positive or negative consequences is vital learning — whether we envisage karma in terms of past and future lives, or of immediate impact on ourselves and those with whom we co-exist.