kevin kwan wrote the book that i'd never write, dealing with a topic (asian culture) that i'm super interested in writing about.
guys, i know people like these. spendthrift aunties, sensitive bromance guys, smart girls who go to top schools whose life is incomplete according to their families until they marry.
kwan's world is so rich with stereotypes, references, canto "pidgin" dialect (i love it when writers introduce dialect to english novels), all the secret acronyms popular amongst asians. like rachel, i'm only dimly aware that there are crazy rich asians, but this is the world i grew up in. kwan gets it and shows it so well.
i think a good writer is a good observer of human nature (and culture), and kwan's characters and settings ring true. this book is really a documentary, with the very conventional catty chicklit plot as a vehicle for us to be voyeurs to a culture that is largely undocumented. most hong kongers live these lives that are materialistic, paradoxical, but few reflect upon it (unless they've had some sort of foreign contact) because it's the norm. and kwan has captured it in all its material contradictions, its habits, all the -las and fucky fucks that locals think and talk in.
at times i was frustrated that kwan doesn't go deeper be literary rather than poppy -- he's quite capable of it, just read his sentences, acute one-liner descriptions of a character of full chapters devoted to the shallow Christian aunties -- but i think the shallowness is intentional. crazy rich asians is unabashedly voyeuristic, and i think it works that way. too much self-reflection gets didactic; here we're forced to draw our own conclusions, feeling slightly guilty that we enjoy the details of rich people's lives so much.
it's not a bad thing to write for a pop audience -- i think, now, of how many people more people are made aware of this social phenomenon of the dynastic families and the nouveau rich of asia. the beginning is perfection -- we all have these stereotypes about asians, right? and with Ormsby/Wormsby's racism at the outset, kwan's saying, get ready for a whole new set of stereotypes. a set more intricate and nuanced than you're aware of.
i wonder if, two hundred years ago, Vanity Fair would've been put on the chicklit shelf. if victorian novels of the nouveau rich were just newcoming bestsellers. this book is GOOD. maybe there's nothing wrong with it chasing a pop formula.
guys, i know people like these. spendthrift aunties, sensitive bromance guys, smart girls who go to top schools whose life is incomplete according to their families until they marry.
kwan's world is so rich with stereotypes, references, canto "pidgin" dialect (i love it when writers introduce dialect to english novels), all the secret acronyms popular amongst asians. like rachel, i'm only dimly aware that there are crazy rich asians, but this is the world i grew up in. kwan gets it and shows it so well.
i think a good writer is a good observer of human nature (and culture), and kwan's characters and settings ring true. this book is really a documentary, with the very conventional catty chicklit plot as a vehicle for us to be voyeurs to a culture that is largely undocumented. most hong kongers live these lives that are materialistic, paradoxical, but few reflect upon it (unless they've had some sort of foreign contact) because it's the norm. and kwan has captured it in all its material contradictions, its habits, all the -las and fucky fucks that locals think and talk in.
at times i was frustrated that kwan doesn't go deeper be literary rather than poppy -- he's quite capable of it, just read his sentences, acute one-liner descriptions of a character of full chapters devoted to the shallow Christian aunties -- but i think the shallowness is intentional. crazy rich asians is unabashedly voyeuristic, and i think it works that way. too much self-reflection gets didactic; here we're forced to draw our own conclusions, feeling slightly guilty that we enjoy the details of rich people's lives so much.
it's not a bad thing to write for a pop audience -- i think, now, of how many people more people are made aware of this social phenomenon of the dynastic families and the nouveau rich of asia. the beginning is perfection -- we all have these stereotypes about asians, right? and with Ormsby/Wormsby's racism at the outset, kwan's saying, get ready for a whole new set of stereotypes. a set more intricate and nuanced than you're aware of.
i wonder if, two hundred years ago, Vanity Fair would've been put on the chicklit shelf. if victorian novels of the nouveau rich were just newcoming bestsellers. this book is GOOD. maybe there's nothing wrong with it chasing a pop formula.
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