Review: At the Chinese Table (by Carolyn Phillips)

My Rating:  4.5 stars

 

"...a fine meal [should be] designed to feed the mind, not just the mouth and the stomach."

 

It's no secret that I love food memoirs – in fact, if given a choice between reading a regular memoir and a food-related memoir, the food one wins out every time!  The reason for this is, well yes, I love to eat, but more significantly, I'm also fascinated by the "culture" of food and the myriad ways that different experiences with food can shape our lives, often in the most unexpected ways. In this regard, Carolyn Phillips' newest work At the Chinese Table was the absolute perfect read, one that checked every single box in terms of what I look for in memoirs, yet at the same time, it also exceeded my expectations in so many ways.  It's not often that a memoir goes way beyond its stated intent of providing insight into aspects of the author's life by incorporating elements such as: a beautifully written, immersive narrative that brought various delectable food dishes to life through lush, vivid descriptions; wonderfully-rendered illustrations (all drawn by the author herself!) woven throughout each chapter that perfectly complemented the author's story; an in-depth exploration of not just a diverse and rich cuisine, but also its history and culture; easy-to-follow recipes with helpful tips and even a glossary of often-encountered terms; and ancestral stories about the Chinese family she married into, a family that inadvertently taught her so much about life, love, relationships, and food.

My experience reading this book was actually very different from all of the previous food memoirs I've read in the past due to the fact that I grew up in a traditional Chinese family just like the author's husband – a background that meant, going into this book, I already had a certain familiarity with the cuisines and the various dishes described in such vivid detail throughout the book.  With Chinese food oftentimes depicted in a homogenous, stereotypical way in mainstream American culture, it was refreshing to see Phillips (a white American woman) go the opposite direction and actually take the time to explore, recognize, and embrace the variety of flavors and nuances of Chinese cuisine  (of course, the fact that her Chinese husband is an epicurean who shares her love for good, authentic Chinese food definitely helped) — to the point that her enthusiasm and love for Chinese cuisine shines forth in every page.  I love how Phillips covers such a variety of different cuisines from all across Taiwan and Mainland China — from food stalls, street markets, and hole-in-the-wall local diners to traditional family dishes and even "haute couture" fare from fancy restaurants.  I mean, how often will you see dishes such as the following mentioned all in one book: yanduxian (one of my favorite Shanghainese dishes), dandan mein, suanni bairou (a Sichuanese dish that is spicy as hell but oh so delicious!), pidan doufu (a tofu dish with preserved egg), xianfantuan(rice roll with fried cruller and other stuffing that, when paired with a warm bowl of soy bean milk, is one of the most heavenly of Taiwanese breakfasts!), hongxiao shizitou (red-braised lion's head meatballs), fenzheng paigu(rice-covered steamed pork ribs over sweet potato — another of my favorite dishes that I rarely see mentioned anywhere!), just to name a few. It was such a delight to see so many familiar dishes (and more) given such detailed coverage (the one downside though was that I started craving these dishes as I was reading knowing full well I wouldn't be able to satisfy those cravings any time soon).  

Without a doubt, this has been one of the most personal and heartfelt memoirs I've read to date!  It's definitely a must-read for anyone who loves and appreciates the varied flavors of authentic Chinese cuisine.  Highly recommended!

Received finished copy from publisher W.W. Norton Company via BookBrowse First Impressions program.

 

Review: Land of Big Numbers (by Te-Ping Chen)

My Rating: 4 stars

With her debut short story collection Land of Big Numbers, Te-Ping Chen brings us an insightful and thought-provoking portrayal of modern day China.  Over the course of 10 diverse and layered stories, Chen provides keen insight into the cultural, political, economic, and social realities of what life is like for citizens in contemporary China and also beyond that, extending to the Chinese diaspora in several instances.  A few of the stories were direct in depicting the plight of Chinese citizens' current reality, while others were more fantastical, employing elements of magical realism to get its point across — all of the stories were well-written though and compelling to read.

While I enjoyed the entire collection overall, a few of the stories were especially engaging, to the point that I couldn't help feeling disappointed when they ended abruptly, without closure.  I prefer fictional stories that are complete — with a beginning, middle, and end — which is why, in general, I'm not particularly keen on short story collections.  I don't like the feeling of being left hanging, though unfortunately, most short story collections do exactly that — this collection, of course, was no exception, though I will say that the quality of the stories does make up for it to some degree.

One of the things I really appreciate about this collection is that it gives readers a glimpse into what life is like for people living in contemporary China.  This is significant given that many of the stories nowadays are about the Chinese immigrant experience in the U.S., which I'm happy to see of course, but I also feel that it's hard to truly understand that experience without having some familiarity with the background history and culture — books like this one are important and necessary contributions to this understanding.

This is a collection that I definitely recommend. At less than 250 pages, the book is brief enough that it can be read in one sitting, yet each story is so deeply nuanced that some amount of reflection is needed before moving on.  As I mentioned earlier, while I did enjoy the entire collection, a few of the stories in particular stood out as favorites.  Among them were:

"Lulu" - about brother/sister twins who grow up in the same household but end up taking radically different paths in life — one becomes a professional gamer while the other becomes a political activist.  I felt this was the most emotionally nuanced story in the collection.

"Hotline Girl" - about a young woman who moves from the village to the city to work at a government call center and also to escape her violent ex-boyfriend, who eventually tracks her down.  

"New Fruit" - about the effects of the qiguo on a village — a 'peculiar fruit' that evokes different, mostly positive, responses from those who eat it, until the day that it suddenly doesn't.  This was an interesting story, one that demonstrated people's propensity toward fickleness but also their capacity for resilience.

"Field Notes on a Marriage" - about an interracial couple where the wife truly begins to understand her husband upon traveling to his home country after his death.  

"Shanghai Murmur" - about the divide between the rich and poor, manifested in a young woman's obsession with an object belonging to one of her customers.

"Gubeikou Spirit" - about a group of people trapped on a subway platform for months, unable to leave until the government gives them permission to do so.  This was by far the strangest story of the entire collection, but also the most fascinating and the one that stood out the most.

Received paper ARC from publisher (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt / Mariner Books).

Review: Until I Find You (by Rea Frey)

My Rating: 2 stars

This book annoyed me from the moment I started reading all the way to the very end. The story was far-fetched and the way much of the plot played out, I basically had to suspend disbelief the entire time.  But what annoyed me most was actually the main character Bec (short for Rebecca), who was so overwritten as a character that I ended up tremendously disliking her (even though I think the intention was, based on the way she was portrayed, the reader is supposed to sympathize with her).   Bec is diagnosed with a condition that causes her to gradually lose her eyesight, yet despite that, she is happy and intent on living a blissful life with her wonderful, supportive husband and their soon-to-be born baby.  But then Bec's husband dies in a horrible accident and instantly her world is shattered.  Unable to bear living in the same house without her husband, Bec decides to move in with her mother, who still lives in the house in Elmhurst that she grew up in.  Shortly after her son Jackson is born however, tragedy strikes again, as Bec's mother dies unexpectedly, and  with no other living relatives to speak of, Bec is left to take care of her infant son Jackson by herself.  Fortunately, Bec has a group of friends and neighbors – other moms in their small, close-knit community – who understand what she is going through and are more than willing to help her out. 

 

The problem is, Bec is fiercely stubborn (probably "obsessively stubborn" is a more accurate term) and basically refuses any type of help from anyone — in fact, she is so adverse to people even offering to help her that she often goes out of her way to demonstrate she is perfectly capable on her own, even if it involves lying about predicaments that she finds herself in.  To me though, it's not just the fact that Bec constantly and deliberately pushes away all help of any kind that annoyed me, but also the aggressively defiant way she refuses the help, almost as though she is insulted by the notion that other people are offering to help her.   It defies logic and quite frankly, I found her behavior tremendously offensive.   One example (out of many) that especially frustrated me was when she's at the park with the other moms and she passes out briefly (likely from sleep deprivation and exhaustion, which she was already complaining about early on in the story) — she then falls and hits her head and of course, her friends rush to help her, but she refuses their efforts to help her up, refuses to let them tend to her wound, refuses to let them accompany her home.  Instead, she ridiculously insists that she has no problem walking home by herself in that condition (with her baby in tow) and to prove it, she charges forward to grab the stroller and head home, except that her friends intervene and force her to let them accompany her (they actually had to get on either side of her and drag her with them!).   Another example — the stairs in her old house, which have broken steps that caused her to trip and nearly fall multiple times, yet doesn't get it fixed because she either doesn't have time (overexertion with doing everything herself) or doesn't want to ask others to help her fix it.  So instead, it's one excuse after another — she knows her way around the house well enough to avoid the broken step, and is very careful on the stairs when carrying the baby (indeed, the 2 times — maybe more, I just stopped paying attention after awhile — that she actually fell down the stairs, she wasn't holding the baby, which I guess is justification that she's in the right?  And don't get me started on the "drama for drama's sake" plot point of having Bec – and other characters -- repeatedly  trip / nearly fall / actually fall down the stairs multiple times over the course of the entire story – why not just get the darn stairs fixed!?).

I think one of the reasons why Bec's stubbornness irked me as much as it did was because of the impact of her actions and behavior on her baby, which she seemed completely oblivious to.  Decisions such as choosing to take her son with her everywhere she went Instead of hiring a nanny or babysitter or even having her friends help watch the baby for a few hours so she could run errands or whatnot, were irrational, especially when a few of those situations actually put the baby in danger (like that one scene where she had the baby in a carrier strapped to her chest and insisted on going to the park all alone late at night to poke around, even though she was given specific instructions to stay home).   This kind of nonsensical behavior from Bec basically permeates the entire story.  

I actually had a lot more issues with the story (particularly as it relates to Bec's interactions with her ex Jake and also the local police), but I can't bring those up without giving away the plot, so I won't list those at this time.  Overall though, as I mentioned earlier, the entire story felt very unrealistic to me.  I mean, I get the message the author is trying to send here — the blind young widow who rises above her circumstances in spite of tragedy, who should be admired for her strength, courage, and unfaltering devotion to her infant son — but execution-wise, it went the wrong way in my opinion.  I think most of us would agree that asking for help when it's warranted (I.e.: when one is injured, as an example), is not normally viewed as a sign of weakness, so for Bec to be portrayed to such extreme, just doesn't make much sense. 

One thing I do want to mention — this is actually the third book I've read by Rea Frey and I actually liked both of her previous novels quite a lot, so I'm a bit disappointed (and surprised) that this one fell so far off the mark for me.  With that said, it hasn't put me off from reading her works in the future, though I do hope that I will take to her next book much better.

Received paper ARC directly from publisher (St. Martin's Griffin).

Review: A Hundred Suns (by Karin Tanabe)

My Rating:  3.5 stars

In 1933, Jessie Lesage accompanies her husband Victor to Indochine (Vietnam)— a colony under French rule at the time — where he has taken up a post overseeing his famous Michelin family's rubber plantations.  Not long after they arrive, the Lesages meet Marcelle de Fabry and her husband Arnaud, an expatriate French couple who, like themselves, are rich and well-connected. The two women quickly become friends, and with Marcelle showing her the way, Jessie starts to dive more deeply into the glamorous, exotic world of colonial Indochine.  When she meets Marcelle's Indochinese lover, the rich silk tycoon Khoi Nguyen, and becomes more immersed in their world, Jessie begins to realize that there is more to Marcelle than meets the eye.  It is also around this time that dark secrets from Jessie's past start to catch up with her — secrets that threaten to upend the family and lifestyle that she worked so painstakingly to build.  Against a backdrop rife with political tension due to colonialism — where the divide between the "haves" and the "have-nots" runs in line with oppression of the native Indochinese by their Western conquerors — a complex story emerges, with characters often required to toe the ambiguous line between self-preservation and "doing the right thing."  

This is a book that I found difficult to rate, as there were things that I liked (mostly the setting and the writing) but also things that didn't work as well for me.  Going into this one initially, when I saw that the story would take place in 1930s Indochine, I was actually looking forward to reading it, as that particular setting isn’t often covered in historical fiction, plus it was a welcome departure from all the WWII-focused historical fiction that I had been reading in recent months.  As is usually the case when I read this genre, I was hoping to learn something new about a country and time period that I was only vaguely familiar with.  While I can't say that I didn't learn anything at all (because I did), I do have to say that this book fell a bit short of expectations for me from a genre perspective.  When I read historical fiction, I expect to be transported to the story's time and place and feel as though I inhabit the same world as the characters – unfortunately, that didn't happen in this case.  Instead, the Indochine setting felt kind of superficial to me, to the point that the main characters could've been transplanted to any other foreign Asian territory (not necessarily Indochine) and the story would've played out largely the same way.  Don't get me wrong -- the author did incorporate some cultural elements into the story that gave us some insight into the historical setting, but the references were few and far between, as the focus of the story on the glamorous lifestyle of the wealthy elite as well as the "mystery" piece of figuring out Marcelle's connection with Jessie, both ended up overwhelming the historical aspects of the story.  To me, this book felt like it should actually belong more in the thriller / suspense category than historical fiction – I think if it had been marketed as such, my reaction would've probably been quite different, as I did like the writing as well as the flow of the story overall, and the plot was intriguing enough to hold my attention from start to finish.

If I had to describe this story in one word, the first word that would come to mind is "lush" — whether it's the descriptions of the characters' decadent mansions, or their vibrant lifestyles steeped in lavish opulence, or even the surrounding landscape (both in Indochine where majority of the story takes place and also in Paris, where critical events involving several of the characters occur), it's hard not to see this story under the light of luxury and privilege.  The narration of the story alternated between Jessie and Marcelle, which made sense given the direction of the story (especially if we look at the story from a "thriller" perspective), but from a historical and cultural perspective, I feel that this format didn't work too well.  To strengthen the historical context, I feel like the other alternating perspective should've been from that of one of the Indochinese characters in the story, such as Trieu (Jessie's servant) or Lanh (the Lesage family's chauffeur) for example – I think this would have provided some much-needed balance to the story, though I guess it can also be argued that this would be an entirely different story then, perhaps not the same one that the author was trying to tell.

With all that said, I feel that overall, this was technically a good read – well-written and well-plotted for the most part (except for the ending, which I wasn't tremendously fond of) – but it could have been so much better.  I would still recommend this book, just with the caveat not to go in with specific expectations in terms of genre.

Received ARC from St. Martin's Press directly as well as via NetGalley.

Review: Daughter of the Reich (by Louise Fein)

My Rating: 4 stars

This is the second book I've read in recent months that is set in the pre-World War II time period of the 1930s in Germany, during which Hitler rose to power and Nazism infiltrated every part of the country.   Though set in a similar time period, the angle that this book explores is markedly different.  The story is told from the perspective of Hetty Heinrich, who, as the daughter of a high-ranking SS officer, was raised to be the perfect German citizen — pure in lineage, patriotic, fiercely loyal to Hitler and the Nazi ideology he espoused.  As a dutiful "daughter" of the Thousand Year Reich, Hetty is prepared to do her part — that is, until one day when she is accidentally reunited with Walter Keller, an estranged childhood friend who had saved her from drowning when she was seven years old.  To Hetty, Walter is perfect in every way — except for the fact that he is Jewish, and also, as Hetty slowly starts to realize, he goes against every belief she had previously been taught.  The two of them end up falling in love and gradually, Hetty realizes everything she thought she understood about her family and country were actually lies, which ignites in her the will to fight against them.  When the tides of anti-semitism in Germany escalate to the point where Walter's mere existence is put into question, Hetty is faced with the ultimate decision to try and save him at all costs.

As is expected when reading historical fiction, the feeling of being transported to a different time and place is one of the things I always look out for, which in this story worked really well.   This book's strongest element though is in the area of character development.  We first meet Hetty when she is 7 years old and subsequently follow her development through her teenage years,  but what stands out the most is her feisty personality and strong-willed nature.  Hetty is a character who both enthralls and frustrates in equal measure, which I guess is what makes her such an interesting character.

Given the historical context, books set against the backdrop of Nazi rule going into World War II are rarely ever "easy" reads and of course, this book was no exception. The sections that described the brutalities inflicted upon Jews (and others who were considered "enemies" of the regime) were difficult to read, yet I understand why such details were necessary to the story.   With that said though, I also felt the writing was a bit uneven in certain areas — the narrative was told entirely from Hetty's first person perspective, yet some sections were descriptive to the point that it didn't seem to match the voice.  I also felt the story dragged a bit in the earlier chapters and it wasn't until around the halfway mark that the story became much more engaging — though with that said, for me at least, the last section of the book was the strongest in terms of plot, character, and emotional nuance.

Despite some issues with pacing and flow, this was a good story overall, and definitely a worthy entry into the canon of WWII-era fiction, in my opinion.  Over the years, I've heard many people complain about the over-saturation of WWII era novels in the market and while I agree for the most part, I also feel it's extremely important for these stories to continue to be told, if anything, to serve as a lesson for us and future generations, that history cannot be forgotten.

Received ARC from William Morrow (HarperCollins) via Bookbrowse First Impressions program

Review: Resistance Women (by Jennifer Chiaverini)

My Rating: 4 stars

 

One of the reasons why I love reading historical fiction is because it gives me a chance to learn about people, places, cultures, time periods, etc. that I may not otherwise have known about.  It is also an opportunity for me to better understand aspects of history and the important role we, as human beings, play in shaping and directing the trajectory of this world in which we live.

Even though Jennifer Chiaverini’s latest historical novel Resistance Women is set in a time period that most bibliophiles like me who read a lot of WWII-themed novels are probably very familiar with, the story she tells about American graduate student Mildred Fish Harnack and the many brave women who were part of her Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra) resistance cell in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s, is not one that I had heard of prior to reading this book.  Spanning a time period from 1929 all the way through the end of the war, this is an epic tale told in meticulous detail, through the eyes of 4 women who bear witness to Germany’s transformation from a thriving intellectual and cultural hub to an oppressive, violent, and much-feared Nazi regime.  In addition to Mildred and Greta, the other 2 perspectives that formed the core narrative were that of Martha Dodd, the lively and vivacious daughter of the U.S. Ambassador, as well as Jewish literature student Sara Weitz (a fictional character based on other Jewish women within the Rote Kapelle network).   

Over the years, I’ve read plenty of books about this particular historical period, but this one is unique in that it tells the story not just from the Jewish perspective, but also from that of anti-fascist Germans who were intent on saving their beloved country from total ruin at the hands of a madman.  This was a fascinating and insightful read that was absolutely well-researched and well-written (I’m blown away by the extensive amount of research that Chiaverini did and how she was able to incorporate all of it into the story so seamlessly).   At nearly 600 pages, also given the subject matter, this was not an easy read by any means, especially the sections that mentioned the horrors and atrocities of what took place during that time – however with that said, being able to learn about these courageous women and getting to hear their inspiring, powerful stories, definitely made this well worth the effort. 

One quick footnote – I also noticed the political “comparison” that many of the other readers mentioned in their reviews and while I admit that it did frustrate me a bit at first because I felt it took some of the focus away from what the story was supposed to be about (namely the resistance women who sacrificed their lives to fight against evil), I eventually decided to ignore it and absorb myself in the women’s powerful stories instead. 

Received complimentary copy from publisher (William Morrow) via Book Browse.