Lan Samantha Chang

In a Nutshell: Strongly mixed feelings. The adaptation from a classic is faithfully done, but those who don’t know the original might just be left furious at the stereotypical depiction of Chinese Americans.

Story:

Leo Chao has been running a restaurant serving Americanized-Chinese food in Haven, Wisconsin since thirty five years. He isn’t honest, his wife Winnie isn’t happy at being the resident unappreciated cook, ad his three sons have taken their distinct paths in life but none of them are truly satisfied. The eldest, Dagou - a man who thinks more from the heart than from the head, attempted music studies before returning to the restaurant as the head chef. The second, Ming – a successful businessman who hates his Chinese roots, struggles between his two identities. The youngest, James – a medical student who is kind and unambitious much to the disappointment of his kin, is stuck in the role of peacemaker.

One Christmas Eve, Leo is found dead in the restaurant freezer, presumed murdered. Soon the three brothers find themselves at the centre of a harsh public eye. How will the change in circumstances change their fates?

The story is written in a third person omniscient narration.

Those who have read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ (or like me, taken the smart way out and watched the Yul Brynner movie … (more)

The book was very uneven. For example, the first half is takes place over just a few days. The 2nd half takes huge leaps of time. And there are unexplained gaps in the narrative. For example, Ming ends up in the hospital with no explanation why?! On the other hand, the narrative repeatedly talks about the key to the freezer making it painfully obvious what was going to happen.

And Leo was such an extreme caricature that I was constantly taken out of the story and questioning: Could a father actually be like this? And other parts were just absurd. The Christmas dinner was too hard to believe. How could people eat and drink so much?

I almost put it down around page 80 until I got to the amusing anecdote about a town with two barbers, one of whom always has a terrible haircut. Which do you go to? A few things like that kept me reading. Well that and I had promised to read it for my book club.

I'd like to say the 2nd half was far more interesting than the first half but the characters were largely confused in their behavior and I became largely confused by them and just couldn’t care about them. I had so many questions about various scenes, people, and objects. I kept hoping the end would bring resolution and explanation but it just left other questions.

In total, it felt like the author had very little idea of how she wanted to write the narrative and just started experimenting, trying different techniques and then dropping them, moving on to others.

While I still enjoy stories without closure, in this case, I’m can’t say I enjoyed the book enough to recommend it to a friend. But I’ll stretch to give it 2 stars because I did like the contrast of the 3 brothers, their parents, the girlfriends, etc. It had potential but just didn’t do it well. And while I didn’t care much for the book, I think it could be turned into a movie that I would enjoy watching.… (more)

Probably should've taken better notes as I went... I imagine this would be more impactful if I read Russian literature since I feel like there's [b:The Brothers Karamazov|4934|The Brothers Karamazov|Fyodor Dostoevsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1427728126l/4934._SX50_.jpg|3393910] references (it is explicitly namechecked as well). A family drama, lots of gray characters, and... the family tragedy is the main character, honestly? it was alright. I dragged it out by reading other books whoops.… (more)