... rather than dissect the much-analyzed power dynamics of Silicon Valley corporations, Wang capitalizes on the thrill factor. She reimagines the predicament of women in tech as a more gripping problem altogether, one in which the little ways in which women are either rewarded or disregarded are magnified by a plot with geopolitical stakes ... It’s such failures of soft skills that can destroy careers, these days, and can also make them, and it’s exactly the right place for Wang to locate her horror ... This is one of the many satisfying things about Impostor Syndrome, alongside Wang’s willingness to pit women against each other and the book’s blend of Hollywood plot values with unusually intelligent humor. For while it shares certain features with dystopian workplace books, Wang’s novel better recalls the fish-out-of-water mixed-genre screen comedy...all of which allow their female leads to be funny and likable while competent. Wang uses that flexibility to explore the power tensions inherent to the digitized world, both at the interpersonal level and at the level of international diplomacy, while never straying into didacticism. She restyles Silicon Valley’s famed 'toxicity' around gender and race into actual poison and translates workplace politics into a caper of geopolitical consequence. Impostor Syndrome, like its two heroines, wears its greatness lightly.
Kathy Wang’s second novel, Impostor Syndrome, uses an entertaining cat-and-mouse game to satirize Silicon Valley’s scapegoating of the [imposter syndrome] idea ... Though the espionage plot provides the novel’s most compelling tensions, it also externalizes the ethical issues confronting tech in a way that minimizes the homegrown risks they pose to its users ... Despite a compelling plot, [Alice] Lu’s character remains disappointingly flat. While Wang carefully outlines the stakes for her characters, she doesn’t interrogate their motivations.
This latest from Wang (Family Trust) takes the spy novel into Silicon Valley, with mixed results. Having been placed in an orphanage by her widowed mother, Julia Lerner is hand-picked by Leo Guskov of Russia’s State Protection Bureau for the express purpose of infiltrating an American tech giant ... Julia’s clandestine data breaches spark the interest of Alice Lu, a Tangerine worker bee who isn’t sure why the head of her company is being flagged during a routine server checkup and is less sure how hard she should try to find out. Wang’s novel is at its penetrating best during these chapters, with trenchant observations on cultural assimilation and the role of women in the tech economy. The tradecraft is less compelling, playing out in a predictable way ... A smart character study for fans of Dave Eggers’s The Circle looking for a different perspective.
Wang (Family Trust) leavens this glossy tale of corporate espionage with savvy takes on cultural assimilation in contemporary America ... Julia and Alice’s pas de deux drives the plot and gives Wang ample space to reflect on modern corporate attitudes toward gender, ethnicity, and the American dream’s appeal to socially disadvantaged members of minority groups and to foreign nationals ... The story builds to a number of dramatic moments that happen offstage, somewhat diminishing the dramatic impact, but Wang’s depictions of office politics and geopolitical dynamics are spot-on. This offers plenty of grist for reader rumination.
