The novel begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao's Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love. In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers.
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.
