Enigmatic ... Disorienting as this narrative shape-shifting can be, Khong’s straddling of multiple literary genres insidiously mirrors her focus on hybrid racial and cultural identity ... Khong manages these twisting threads with masterful deftness ... [An] irresistible puzzle of a novel.
The story is full of family secrets and discoveries that could easily veer into melodrama, but Khong is a deft writer who grounds even the most sweeping themes and scenes. Her eye is especially attuned to the fickle markers of race and the illusion of the American dream ... As the novel unfolds, the story drops delicious mysteries that guide the reader ... The writing can feel didactic ... Still, the novel’s ambition is admirable, and it’s easy to get lost in the unspoken truths between Lily, Nick and May as they try to knit themselves into a coherent whole.
Well written and perceptive, if predictable, about issues of power, money and class, Khong’s sophomore book covers so much ground over three continents and 50 years that by the very nature of its epic sweep, it cannot have the crackling energy and page-level panache that characterized her wry, episodic debut ... In this big, market-friendly novel, the characters feel designed and polished for a broad sensibility ... Khong shines with keen insights into how we access our personalities through the cultures made available by circumstance.
Masterful ... Riveting in its unexpected turns, Real Americans is a novel about past mistakes and their echoes — and a reminder that those histories need not be binding.
Too many of these moral conundrums are expressed in the baldly straightforward manner of a scientific study. But the questions that drive May's academic research baldly double as animating questions for the novel. Unsubtle as they are, they're also queries that we will likely have to answer in the near future — a time when polygenic screenings are increasingly common, people lengthen their lives with elixirs, and beginnings become harder and harder to recall.
As righteous as [the] message is, its presence in every fold and gesture of Real Americans can make the story feel somewhat static. The novel’s real beauty lies in its amazement at the sheer luck of being alive ... Awe at the details of reality sparkles throughout the novel.
Real Americans bogs down a bit during Nick’s overly long immersion in Ivy League college tours, undergraduate social hierarchies, and Yale’s Skull and Bones club, meant to highlight issues of class ... [Khong] makes a case for the importance of not just self-definition, but also compassion and a moral compass strong enough to resist a societal push to stand out at any cost.
At once complex and compelling, as science and philosophy sit cheek by jowl with history and elements of magic. As the three narrative strands merge, their denouement is unexpected yet perhaps predestined: the fruit of a seed planted long ago.
This plot-rich, spiraling, multigenerational epic possesses the same heartrending humanity and deceptively subtle portrayal of characters’ unseen depths—so impossible to relate, so essential to everything. As in life, the love is in the details.
