Page 45 Review by Stephen
Sequel to KAMPUNG BOY after Mat has left the Malaysian countryside to further his education in a bustling town full of shops, market traders and coffee shops, rickshaws, busses, bicycles and cars. There a Chinese boy, Frankie, introduces himself and the young lads bond over music. Mat only has a radio his family listen to together in their new but spartan accommodation, but Frankie's family, who live above and amongst their hectic coffee shop, have a record player and substantial collection of vinyl. Then girls become the centre of attention, and one in particular for Mat, but just like KAMPUNG BOY this too ends on a note of change and loss as Frankie leaves to further his own education... in England.
Lat relishes drawing the exotic crowd scenes as much as he does caricaturing Mat's school mates, and after the sudden shift in years and surge of growth to Mat's teenage years, the students, gangly and bow-legged, cross-eyed or drooling like imbeciles, look like an alternative Asian cast to Leo Baxendale's Bash Street Kids. It's another exuberant book full of landscape portraits and a lot of teeth, depicting a time and place lost after forty to fifty years of, err, progress, yet the classroom trials, and the childhood escapades and preoccupations haven't really changed much in essence. I mean, school runs: whoever liked them?
