\"A dense novella from Australia, offering an imitation of The White Hotel--Freudian case-history with historical/political overtones--that's initially intriguing, vaguely atmospheric, but ultimately murky and unconvincing. In Part I, Dr. Kenneth Ayres--a fat, hedonistic, 34-year-old Scotsman, physician/psychiatrist to the colonials in 1927 Shanghai--meets Julia Paradise, a missionary's wife in deep psychic trouble, with morphine addiction the least of her problems. Julia suffers from \"zoopsia\" (hallucinations of fearsome animals) and other nightmarish terrors; she's subject to tantrums, downright dementia, and frequent cravings for sleep. So, using hypnosis, Dr. Ayres persuades Julia to describe her northern Australia childhood, the ugly details of which are set forth in Part II: sexual abuse by father Joachim, a German naturalist/explorer and insatiable lecher; pregnancy; a near-fatal encounter with snakes and leeches. Then, in Part III, Dr. Ayres begins to suspect that Julia (with whom he's been having sex) may have been concocting some or all of her psycho-history: Is she really out to avenge Dr. Ayres' crimes against women? What about her alliance with missionary teacher Gertrude Platz, an Oxford-educated Marxist? And, after martial law is declared by the oppressive forces of Gen. Chiang Kai-Shek, Ayres sees in Julia \"the face of the twentieth century\". . .and devotes the rest of his life to selfless doctoring in northern China (a dubious transformation). First-novelist Jones displays a solid talent for dry, Maugham-ish narration, along with some vivid patches of lyrical, lurid exotica. But neither Ayres nor Julia is firmly drawn enough to support the busy, contrived interplay of themes in the final section--where the implied psyche/history parallels seem strained or opaque or both. In all: curious, sleek, but basically tinny and fuzzy in its pretensions.\"--Kirkus