The better part of Figures of Speech, or at least the more assimilable part, is a private view of Bangkok and Japan, with the author's comments on the East-West imbroglio and what Unesco calls the mutual appreciation of cultural values. It's Mr Enright's own voice one hears detailing the traps and vanities of university life, embassy parties and literary gatherings—and in his characters' observations on the equivocal scene…. [Mattie is a] Chinese typist on holiday from Singapore; voluble, Westernised, but baffling. The starting-point of her thoughts about anachronism is Chung Lu, a young writer from Hong Kong who quotes the sages and models himself on the Confucian 'superior man'—anachronism or not (Mr Enright seems to be saying yes and no), he's pretty baffling too. They conduct a strange courtship, and are left facing a marriage that I find unimaginable. Something about them, however, may be deduced...