Book Review -- Something Like A House

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Something Like A House, by Sid Smith, Picador 2001.

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"Something Like a House" follows thirty years in the life of Jim Fraser, an English soldier captured by the Chinese during the Korean War. Fraser winds up spending the next thirty years living among the Miao people of southern China, and it is through his eyes and limited world view that the reader experiences post-revolutionary Chinese history. Intellectually, Fraser is not the sharpest tool in the shed, and readers familiar with China's "scar literature" might find that watching the events of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution unfold through his eyes give a certain unblemished insight to subjects already well examined by more intellectual lenses. Fraser's Zen-like, unquestioning view of the story unfolding around him gives "Something Like a House" a uniquely neutral feel towards subjects and events that often provoke strong bias.

However, this fairly straightforward story winds up taking a strange twist as the reader learns that Fraser's presence in this Miao village, far from being a coincidence, is in fact part of a more nefarious subplot involving biological warfare and the scheming of an embittered Chinese scientist with strange racial notions. As this subplot becomes more prominent in the latter half of the story, the feel of the story is changed from that of a novel with a historical setting to a kind of X-files with Chinese characteristics. While this shift might throw some readers, author Sid Smith is talented enough to keep the reader enthralled, even if they might feel a bit puzzled as to precisely what kind of story they'd just read. Coen Brothers fans should have no problem hanging along the twisting conceptual ride that "Something Like a House" offers; readers expecting more ordinary fare might come away slightly puzzled.

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