MixedPop MattersDespite itself, it cultivates beauty and order, and aims for a sense of purpose that is implicit in the title ... Heti’s bigger concerns, however, are framed within the narratives of self-help and religion. Stories about Sheila’s futile attempts at life and writing are interwoven with passages about Jungian analysis and Bible stories. These narratives lend shape to Sheila’s story but dilute its affective power. As a result, How Should a Person Be? registers as a curiously complacent text, resolutely turned inward towards itself, and absolutely unaware about the world insofar as the world does not revolve around Sheila and the people she knows ... This maudlin attempt at drawing a connection, however tenuous, between her personal sense of triumph and the Biblical version of the triumph of Judaism leaves a rather bitter taste, particularly for a book that seems to have no sense of the continuously shifting cultural, social, and political landscapes of the present ... How Should a Person Be? is steeped in the icky sheen of the language of self help and psychology and is primarily interested in the Well-Adjusted Self making Beautiful and Truthful Art. I never got the sense that there’s anything truly at stake for Sheila...
Kevin Kwan
MixedPopMattersKwan, obviously having too good a time writing the book, went on for over 500 pages and one had to trudge wearily along ... The blurbs set the framework for how this book should be read: It’s both fun and excessive...but it’s also meant to be a commentary on this society, apparently, judging by the comparisons to Wharton, or Waugh, or Austen ... What the novel lacks, however, is any sort of interiority or contradiction, or any attempt to wrestle with the implications of class society and the tensions between the rich and, well, the rest. At its heart, Crazy Rich Asians is a sentimental novel, and it holds the elites up as an example ... If you really want mindless reading, you can’t go wrong with Crazy Rich Asians. Kwan is not a terrible writer, if entertainment is all you hope to get out of your reading material; he does have a flair for a witty turn of phrase, on occasion, and the paper-thin shallow characters are so forgettable you could gladly put it down and put the book out of your mind in an instant if you needed to focus your attention on something else, like real life.
