The Behind The Smile Series is the story of Lek, a bar girl in Pattaya, Thailand. Lek was born the eldest child of four in a typical rice farming family in the northern rice belt of Thailand. A catastrophe occurred out of the blue one day – her father died young with huge debts that the family knew nothing about. Lek was just twenty years of age, and the only one who could prevent the foreclosure of the family farm, and allow her younger sister and two brothers to continue their education. However, the only way she knew how was to go to work in her cousin’s bar in Pattaya.
Can a Pattaya bar girl ever go back to being a regular girlfriend or wife?
'Behind The Smile' is a glimpse into one part of Thailand, a country known around the world as 'The Land of Smiles'.
The Lady in the Tree continues straight on from book three, Maya - Illusion. Lek is still in business with her old friend Ayr and they mean business as well, especially when rivals from nearby try to intimidate them. The two friends come up with a daring solution, which they can't even discuss with their friends, family or husbands. Soom is still at university in Bangkok and doing well in spite of having problems of her own, let alone looming final exams, which political upheaval in the capital threatens to disrupt. Craig continues to write, but he realises all of a sudden that he has bigger problems than finishing and selling his books. An old friend and an old lady give the three women some remarkably similar and accurate advice, but where will it get them?
Genre: FICTION / Contemporary Women1 TROUBLE AT T’ MILL
“It’s just got to be some kind of mafia… I can’t see who else it could be…”
“Who’s got to be the Mafia, Lek? I don’t follow you,” asked Craig eventually having to give up on his writing because Lek was driving him mad with her incessant mumbling, hunched over her laptop at the other end of the desk.
“Someone is trying to ruin our businesses, aren’t they? Little, niggly things like petty theft started about two weeks ago… yes, about two weeks after Ayr went to Australia to get married, but I didn’t think too much about them, because that sort of stuff happens, doesn’t it, right? But when we started having real problems the other day… It’s as if they were testing us with the thefts, and now that they know that we are a ma.., er woman down, they are hitting us hard. They know that I’m rushed off my feet and can’t be everywhere at once.
“They also know that I don’t have a man who can help me.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? A Thai man would be able to help. He would know people, he would understand, he would do something to help… but what can you do? Write a story about it? Put it on your blog? You don’t know how things work in Thailand, you don’t know anybody and you don’t even speak Thai.
“Therefore, I am left on my own to take on the mafia without a husband to help me.”
“If you put it like that, I suppose you’ve got a point, but you don’t paint me in a very good light, do you? I’m just some useless storyteller who can’t help his wife take care of business.”
“It is truth…”
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Dutch
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Translation in progress.
Translated by Cindy Pierlet
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by Alexander Alvarez
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Author review: Alexander has made a fantastic, and contientious job of both the translation and its formatting. |
