This was a fascinating book about three generations of a Chinese-American family (with an absolutely gorgeous cover). The relationships between each generation are both loving and deeply troubled. May is a woman who flees Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China to come to the U.S. She’s a brilliant scientist (a researcher of biogenetics) but struggles to form a close relationship with her daughter, Lily. Lily wants the loving relationships she sees in other American families but her mother can barely say “I love you”.
Struggling in her career pursuits after college, Lily falls in love with a white American pharmaceutical heir who is trying to live independently of his family’s wealth and business. From the beginning, the two struggle with cultural and racial differences, but primarily socio-economic differences. Then they discover something they didn’t know about their families’ histories.
The third generation is Nick, Lily’s son. The book is told in an interesting order, through Lily’s perspective, then Nick’s, and then May’s. May’s story is the most interesting, from her childhood of poverty in rural China, to her life as a university student and scientist. I haven’t read many stories that take place in this setting, and it’s terrifying.
With each other they spoke loudly: Their voices periodically rose to excited shouts, and they laughed raucously. In English they were milder mannered, polite. My mother had always spoken English to me. Now I wondered if, in doing so, she had not fully been herself.
This is a family that does terrible, selfish things to each other, with consequences that span decades. I found each character sympathetic but also unlikeable, shutting each other out and making decisions without ever talking to each other. I could see in this book how the secretive nature of one generation is passed down to the next. And even as each generation tries to overcome the deficits of the previous generation, it doesn’t make things better. For example, Lily tries to be the affectionate parent her mother wasn’t, but she smothers her son with neediness while not being honest with him about his father and grandmother. Nick also finds himself in troubled relationships, because he’s uncommunicative and closed off.
The second half of this book, Nick and May’s stories, is much more interesting than the first half, so I’m glad I pushed through. I had trouble connecting with Lily, though I could appreciate her struggles with trusting a super-wealthy white family, at the same time feeling the temptation to give in and enjoy all that money can buy. Can two people from such different backgrounds really make a relationship work? It’s a very American story.
There are twists in the plot that I won’t tell you about, but this book covers quite a bit: historical fiction about Maoist China and the Cultural Revolution, ethics in scientific research, and an exploration of class and cultural differences. And through it all, what it means to be a “real American.” I did find it slow going at first, but it was definitely worth reading.
I received an advanced review copy of this book from NetGalley and publisher Knopf. It published April 30, 2024.
