Expat

Are you tired of reading about all those clever, temporary expatriates, who buy a run-down dwelling in Provence or Tuscany; then spend happy years renovating it with the cooperation of laughing locals and rustic characters; eventually producing a home fit for Architectural Digest?

Are you weary of reading how these intimidating people concoct fabulous meals based on local produce; all worthy of inclusion in Gourmet Traveller?

Are you sick of chick lit with its stories of thirties singletons and their angst; who, in spite of many self-imposed hurdles get their man and fade into some glorious sunset?

Let's face it: that's just the beginning, the easy part.

It's time for some chook* lit about women who've 'got their man' and now have to keep him in spite of the pressures of acquiring property, furniture, businesses, cars, boats, children, school bills, in-laws, dogs, cats, birds, fish, tortoises, white mice, guinea-pigs, careers, peer group jealousies, corporate transfers, social disasters, credit squeezes, squeezable secretaries, failing health, mounting debt and culinary inadequacy.

Read Wendy McTavish's version. You'll feel better afterwards.

Wendy went to Hong Kong in 1966 just in time for China's Cultural Revolution. She is still there today, years after the 1997 Handover.

This book will amuse you. It may annoy you. But it will at least give the layman some idea of what it was like to live in Hong Kong during the last forty years.

* chook: Australian parlance for old chicken