Lucky at Love: Stories and Essays From Asia - Softcover

Eric Browning-Larsen was born and raised in northern Minnesota. He completed a B.A. in English, an M.A. in Industrial Relations and a J.D. in Law. He spent his corporate career working in several corporations, mainly in senior human resources and general management positions, most recently as vice president of international operations for a Seattle-based company. While still in his thirties, he abandoned a promising corporate career to pursue other interests, including management consulting in S.E. Asia, writing, Japanese-style gardening, and international travel. Currently, he is working on a collection of poems based on his experiences growing up in a small town. He lives in Bellevue, Washington, a suburb of Seattle.

"Lucky at Love" by Seattle-based writer, Eric Browning-Larsen, is a delightful, well-written collection of fifty-nine nonfiction short stories and essays based on his experiences traveling and working throughout Asia.

Although written from a Western perspective, Browning-Larsen possesses an uncanny ability to accurately dissect and examine the groundswell of changes occurring in Asian societies. Rather than editorializing about these changes, he tells stories in a straightforward manner, letting his readers form their own conclusions.

In "Sophea's World", for example, a story about a young Cambodian girl he met in Siem Reap's market, he describes Sophea's life. In many respects, she is a reminder of the Khmer Rouge's brutal legacy and its effects on ordinary people. Sophea's house was deliberately burned down shortly after her birth killing her eleven brothers and sisters.

When Browning-Larsen asked Sophea about what she looked forward to in her life, he was haunted by her reply:

"I am longing for the afterlife when I can be with my brothers and sisters. Yes, longing so much for them," she said, with a shy, but serene smile appearing for the first time on her brown, deeply tanned face. "Is it too much?"

In "The Formerly Rich in Bangkok", he describes the effect of the economic collapse in Thailand following the government's decision on July 2, 1997 to float the baht against the U.S. dollar from the perspective of a taxi driver, a former member of the social elite.

Other stories, like "The Rich Uncle No One Loved" and "The Woodcarver's Legacy", are richly detailed with tightly crafted prose. They drew me into his stories beginning with the first lines and kept me reading uninterrupted until finished. Browning-Larsen takes on social issues in Asia like the second wife phenomenon in some countries, for example, and describes their effects based on his observations.

In "Motorcycle Madam", he describes an encounter on the streets of Saigon with a prostitute.

"She spoke to me in staccato English, with a Vietnamese accent.

'What's your name?

'You Australian?

'Where you from?

"The questions came faster than my answers.

'How long you stay here?

'Where you stay?

"They bumped into each other like six-year-old school kids holding hands in pairs and walking in a wiggling line, hyperactive with pent-up energy and impatient to get places."

The story ends when he rebuffs her offer:

"I resumed my walk into the night, a little dazed and tongue-twisted, still trying to answer her questions."

Browning-Larsen sprinkles essays throughout the collection of stories in which he offers strong opinions based on his personal observations that span issues such as the effects of boycotting Burma, mail order brides, cross-cultural dating, and the effects of current practices on the environment. In his essay, "One Size Doesn't Fit All", Browning-Larsen challenges the conventional Western perspective on the Tianammen Square massacre of student protestors.

Although my original intent was to read one or two stories before falling asleep one night, I found myself drawn into each successive story completely finishing the entire book in one sitting. -- Chompoo Srikosai