A compelling portrait of family dynamics under pressure.
An interracial couple vacations with both sets of parents.
Following the success of her novels Chemistry (2017) and Joan Is Okay (2022), Wang returns with the story of Keru and Nate, a Chinese American woman and a white man who meet at Yale, fall in love, and get married. Some years later, they go on two vacations—to Cape Cod and the Catskills—during which both sets of parents, as well as some unexpected visitors, come to stay with them. As they share rental houses with their families (and their large dog, Mantou), racial, cultural, and class tensions come to the surface. Keru’s Chinese immigrant parents are demanding and rigid, while Nate’s white, Appalachian, working-class parents (the couple argues at one point about whether they’re “white trash”) have their own set of particularities and prejudices. Keru chafes against Nate’s parents’ rural conservatism, occasional racism, and constant need to keep up appearances through pleasantries, even when conflict lurks beneath the surface. On the other hand, Nate feels intimidated and judged for his amateur Mandarin skills and reliance upon bourgeois comforts that Keru’s parents, as immigrants who have had to live in less ideal conditions, feel are lazy. (In one memorable incident, Keru’s father proclaims that “to use a dishwasher is to admit defeat.”) Caught in the crossfire of these contrasting mentalities and expectations, Keru and Nate are forced to reflect on the values that shape their relationship and their burgeoning family. Wang is an incisive writer with sharp psychological insight who does dialogue particularly well, revealing what is not said in conversation just as much as what is said out loud. This quietly engrossing novel is subtle and powerful in its cultural critique and will surely be relatable for anyone who has in-laws.
A compelling portrait of family dynamics under pressure.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593545546
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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