A review on the back reads:

"A Woman of Angkor is a powerful work of imagination that takes the reader to a faraway time and place and makes the story vividly real. Through the voice of his heroine, Sray, John Burgess conjures a story of Khmer family whose lives are interwoven with the building of the magical, mysterious temple of Angkor Wat."

(In case you notice that this book appears to have been registered before it was published: I repurposed a BCID that was no longer in use).

Well, isn't Sray just perfect! All she wants is to live a simple life and do good works anonymously, yet she's forced to live in luxury, failing to notice as men swoon over her beauty, grace, benevolence and diplomacy. No matter how she bats away the praise and tells us it must be meant for someone else, she just can't help transforming all around her for the better.

By halfway through this overlong book, I was profoundly bored and irritated by her, and all the other thinly-drawn characters.

The plot's reasonably complex, and the tension builds towards the end, but it's then let down by a "and suddenly everything got sorted out", overly-convenient resolution.

Besides, I couldn't make myself care about such shallowly-developed characters.

In addition, I was frustrated by the trite and obvious writing style which, in places, is unforgivably lazy. For example, Sray travels to China and, in the space of one paragraph, describes three things her eyes alight upon as "strange-looking", rather than actually telling the reader what they look like.

I read this because I'll be visiting Angkor Wat, which is the sole reason I'd suggest anyone bother to do the same. I did learn a little about the Khmers and the temple.

On the piano, on the concourse.

Found it on a public piano and was really happy to learn about this program. Will read and release into london