... accomplished and engrossing ... an energetic eventfulness and a sprawling cast that call to mind the literary classics of Victorian England ... unmassaged portrayal of present realities emerge in Lee’s ambitious book ... It would be remarkable if she had simply written a long novel that was as easy to devour as a 19th-century romance...But Lee intensifies her drama by setting it against an unfamiliar backdrop: the tightly knit social world of Korean immigrants, whose children strive to blend into their American foreground without clashing with their distinctive background. It’s a feat of coordination and contrast that could kill a chameleon, but Lee pulls it off with conviction ... crosses cultural lines: its heartache is universal.
At first glance, Min Jin Lee's debut epic could be mistaken for an Amy Tan-inspired Asian American tries to balance two worlds family drama. But upon closer inspection, Lee gently but firmly pushes the genre in a more modern direction, and in the process manages to create her own niche in the literary world ... Lee's background, as a Korean-American who went to Yale and lives in New York City, igives her writing with an unmistakable authenticity. She writes the inside language and nuances of ambitious Columbia business school grads as fluently as she writes of the longings of an undereducated, middle-aged Korean mother and choral singer afraid of her own talent ... not a novel to be entered into lightly, but the rewards are well worth the time. It's not a day trip; it's an immersion into a fully realized and beautifully written world.
... different from any book I’ve ever read — a big, juicy, commercial Korean-American coming-of-age novel, one that could spawn a satisfying miniseries, and one that definitely belongs in this summer’s beach bag ... Lee’s writing can be clunky...Even so, Casey’s story is a fabulous one, taking her — and the reader — to some unexpected places.
Lee mixes feminism and cultural awareness to create a sweeping story of first-generation Korean Americans finding their way between the old world and the new ... With very broad strokes and great detail, Lee paints colorful three-dimensional characters and outlines intergenerational and cultural struggles brilliantly. There is a little first-novel shyness on some issues but nothing the rest of the narrative doesn’t make up for.
While Lee has nothing radical to add to the immigrant narrative, her confident storytelling and glitzy portraits of Manhattan life make the novel a pleasurable, engrossing read.
The author changes hats so effortlessly and frequently that we are able to know all sides of each story as it is told, often agreeing with the opinion of one character until that of their antagonist is revealed ... It is obvious from Free Food for Millionaires that Lee doesn't believe in black and white definitions of good and bad, moral and immoral. Her characters are one big jumble of mixed-up desires, often finding relief in unconventional love affairs ... about the fine line between sacrifice and exploitation, and finding fulfillment in a dubious world. The characters wrestle with conflicting emotions inside their own souls and decide which one will lead them to happiness. Sometimes the path is long and winding, but in the end it's worth every page.
Lee filters through a lively postfeminist perspective a tale of first-generation immigrants stuck between stodgy parents and the hip new world ... Though a first-novel timidity sometimes weakens the narrative, Lee's take on contemporary intergenerational cultural friction is wide-ranging, sympathetic and well worth reading.
... an epic-scale hybrid of the 19th-century novel (Middlemarch is oft-cited here) and Bonfire of the Vanities, but it lacks Eliot’s literary polish and Wolfe’s exuberance ... Casey’s an appealing heroine, but the book strays from her story: Lee adopts an omniscient voice that swoops into the consciousnesses of dozens of characters, often unpersuasively. Few minor characters rise above stereotype or expectation. Still, some elements—Casey’s struggles with faith, her tempestuous relationship with her mentor/benefactress, a department-store mogul—are handled with a subtlety that bodes well for future books ... Fitfully entertaining but not extraordinary.
