The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones

I noticed this lovely title when perusing my local library during a Lost in Translation afterglow. I thought, what the hell, I trust this author now.  Unfortunately,  I frequently found myself forcing myself to stick with it. While the Lost In Translation was a wild ride to an exotic land, this one was as dry, banal, and stereotypical as a walk through a Chinatown souviner shop. 

The book was about a food writing widow, Maggie, who finds that her husband may have sired a child during one of his business trips to China. She then travels to China to deliver a paternity test herself in order to deny the claim. Along the way she befriends a half Chinese-American man, Sam, that is trying to keep the spirit of his ancestry and Chinese cooking alive in an upcoming banquet  competition.


The book falters technically when it comes to the ebb and flow of tensions. The three biggest tensions were 1) the results of the paternity test, 2) the results of the banquet competition and 3) the budding relationship between the Sam and Maggie. All three tensions resolved in the last two chapters of the book and occurred with quick succession. The third tension occurred almost as a consolation prize. Their friendship never hinted at sexuality, and the described event lacked chemistry.  It just didn't fit. The book built up tension then let it simmer out. This is reminiscent of the end of Lost in Translation where they found out the dumb fate of Peking man in the last paragraph. This disappointment may simply be a feature of Nicole's Mones writing ability.

I also couldn't help questioning its depth. I kept on sniffing whiffs of phony-ness. She would hint at small quirks of characters as broad generalizations of Chinese culture. In this method, she implicitly made odd assumptions about American culture in comparison. That sounds oblique, but that is the best way I can summarize how phony it felt. There was a forced foreignness to it.  For example, at one point Sam mentions, somehow condescendingly, that Maggie should take a shower. The bathroom is free because all Chinese women take showers at night. What does that mean? What does that imply? I think that it is supposed to imply that China is fantastically exotic. (Also, I take my showers at night so I had no idea where this was coming from) Another example was the translation of a Chinese expletive to "fornicators". Modern English has a VERY a similar expletive, but this awkward translation was a forced attempt at making their colloquialisms sound much more foreign. Needless to say, we should not mistake poor translations for mystique. These are only small examples to underline the overall uneasy tone of the book.

Where the book excels was its description of food and the effect of the Cultural revolution. It is a pity that the book did not focus on these things more. The food was only well featured in the final act during the banquet. The Culture revolution was just too big a topic to introduce in the final third of the book like she had. If it was only a mentioned to link the generations through its contrast with the feudal system described earlier in the book, then it was lost on me. Sorry, Nicole.

Lost in Translation by Nicole Mones

I picked up this book because I thought it was about the movie. Apparently it wasn't. I kept reading because modern day China is a fascinating backdrop for a fiction book.

The book is about a 36 year old female interpreter that gets her rocks off with Chinese men. The time frame in question encapsulates her work with an archaeologist on his search for the lost Peking Man, an early hominid that provided one of the many evolutionary links between man and ape.

As a romance, the book fell short. The long tense relationship between her and Lin ended with a bang and then came back with a whisper. It just wasn't a satisfying ending. As a thriller, the book also disappointed. I don't want to spoil the ending, but I wish they could have foreshadowed the resolution and took more than a paragraph to hand us the big reveal. The book excels almost exclusively as a portrait of China. I was exposed to new customs, people, and scenery more so than if I had actually visited china.

I was especially compelled by the plight of Alice. She seemed so real but at the end she seemed like a total fake. She had questionable motives, but they didn't seem disingenuous until the end, when she realized it herself (although I don't buy the whole scared for life by a political speech thing). Finally, a book where character growth isn't just a plot device.

The writing style threw me off. The book seemed as though it were translated directly from Chinese. Sentences were often just clauses, and most actions were described in a flowery metaphorical way. I got used to it though; I ate bitterness for only the first quarter of the book or so.

One thing that I noticed that other book reviewers didn't seem to mention: this book really sexualized the Asian male. I am glad for it. American media tends to feminize the Asian male, and I didn't realize to what extent until I read this book. That is a damn shame too. As an Asian female, I'd like to say I don't have any of those preconceived opinions about male sexuality.

Overall a great read. It wasn't necessarily a light read, but I can't say it rocked my worldview either.

Street Cred: National Best Seller, Kafka Prize, Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association’s annual five-state book award, NYT notable Book

Smart Women by Judy Blume

I feel as though something must have happened to Judy Blume to permanently scar her world view. I picked up Smart Women because I envisioned being given lessons in style and grace by the fictional stories of wonderful women that were faced with adversity. Instead, I got the fictional stories of women making bad decisions under the stress of infantile men.  By the end of the book, my own world view started to become jaded, wondering what made me think a life full of happiness with a wonderful man was probable in the first place.

The book was about a loose 40 year old divorcee, Margo, falling in love with her controlling friend's ex-husband. This book is only bearable because of the excellent character portrayals, so I'd like to further summarize the book through character snapshots.

The women
Margo: A 40 year old divorcee with 2 teenage children named Michelle and Stuart. She has a long list of lovers and flings and isn't ashamed of that. She isn't exactly glamorous, just... easy going. I don't think the author here was trying to make a loose-moraled person, but I did not like how she felt about her children. Its as if she had a little timer on both of them, counting down until the age 18 when she would finally get her freedom. I don't blame her for the events in the book because I was as charmed by Andrew as she was.

B.B/Francine: A thin, gorgeous, glamorous woman who is on the uptight side. Her daughter is Sara and her ex-husband is Andrew. Although most people would call her a maniac, I thought she was rather nuianced and believable while being out of the range of a normal personality. She absolutely could not stand her ex-husband coming to town. My word, he may want to see their child! Needless to say, she broke down and completely shirked her responsibilities by taking a long lavish visit to the psychiatric ward in a far away land. I know a snarky comment like that is probably the reasoning that caused her to break down, but there IS a middle ground between being too uptight and not giving a damn at all. Being able to go on a 6 month long picnic without even the responsibility of smiling at someone? Well, that is something we'd all like but goodness, we have to keep up appearances.

Michelle: The rude and loudmouthed 17 year old daughter of Margo. She seems kind of messed up because of the divorce, but honestly, she had some good points. She only seems uptight and particular because her mother might not in fact be giving her enough structure. I mean, I'd be pissed if my easy mother let her 3 month boyfriend move in with his 12 year old daughter. And after moving across country to get away from my dad? It doesn't seem like she thought about me at all. Michelle had a nice story arc where Eric, Margo's 21 year old ex-lover, comes to town to crash on the couch. Michelle is wooed by his youth and motorcycle and carelessly loses her virginity to him. Of course, this book begin what it is, Eric takes off at the drop of a hat, leaving Michelle in shambles. Michelle let her self go on this escapade because she wanted "experience". It sounded like she wanted experience being hurt. Reading this book is like an experience in being hurt.

Sara: The 12 year old daughter of B.B./Francine. Some reviews call her the most sympathetic character but I call her  the least controversial. She was just a young child of divorce that wanted to make everyone happy. Her mother was a little uptight and it made her a worrisome little girl.

Clare: This is a tertiary charactor if there ever was one. She is the connecting friend between Margo and B.B. It is how they met, and she is a better friend to either of them than they are to each other. Her character traits include being rich and having a daughter, Puffin. She doesn't get much play in the book, but we do see enough of  her to get into her relationship drama. She decides to end her separation by taking back her indifferent cheating husband. Its really his indifference that bothered me. I mean, he easily could have loved her and wanted to get back together with her it wouldn't have affected the book at all.

Puffin: Clare's airhead daughter and girlfriend of Stuart. She is spoiled because her mom is rich. Midway through the book she has to get an abortion because Stuart doesn't want to have a baby. I thought the whole situation was pathetic myself. She could have kept the baby. I mean, she wanted the baby, she had the means to keep the baby, but she couldn't get Stuart to want the baby. She asked Michelle to convince Stuart to marry her so the baby would be legitimate. She didn't try very hard is what I'm saying. After that brief conversation, they got in the car and got an abortion. The whole thing was unsettling. They decided to end the pregnancy because no one wanted to make a decision.

The Men:
Andrew: He seemed like a charmer. I was charmed. He came to town so he could spend a year seeing his daughter, Sara, and perhaps had an ulterior motive of getting his wife to love him again. He didn't try terribly hard except for a forced kiss in the beginning, but B.B is impossible. He falls in love with Margo, perhaps because she lived next door, but also perhaps because she falls in love so easily. I understood by the portrayal of Margo why this crazy mixed up situation would happen, but you'd think Andrew would have second guessed the idea of merging two families that weren't all that committed to eachother. When the book ended I realized that of course he wouldn't second guessed it because this book is about how men don't take responsibility for their decisions and the women do.

Stuart: Daughter of Margo. He stook up for Margo a couple of times when Michelle tried to out her, but, because he is  male, all of his positive qualities had to be flushed down the toilet when he made his girlfriend get an abortion without so much as a comforting word.

Eric: Young ex-lover of Margo. Character qualities are: 1) being horrible because he is male and 2) has a motorcycle. He could have been thrown in to show how careless men can be, but also perhaps to show how horrible a mother Margo is. Margo knew Eric would take Michelle's virginity and run, but she didn't even do so much as tell Michelle that she used to have sex with Eric. She didn't even stop them when she noticed them fooling around in her room. She decided to let Michelle make one of the biggest mistakes of her life because Margo didn't want to be bothered.

Lewis: Tertiary character that had perhaps one paragraph of dialogue through the whole book. He begged B.B./Francine to marry him because of how beautiful and in control she seemed. Ha. I suppose he was thrown in to illustrate that when men seem wonderful its because the are complete tools.

I don't think everyone should blame the women. Sure, its easy because the book was told through the eyes of women, but just because they took all the responsibility doesn't mean they should take in all the fault.

I've read other reviews saying that this book titled Smart Women sarcastically, about how the book is actually a case study in the stupid mistakes women make and how they justify them. If that is true, the act of searching for happiness is in itself a stupid mistake