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A review by tshepiso
Family Trust by Kathy Wang
2.5
We can add Family Trust to the stack of books I powered through despite deeply disliking them from the very start. I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself. This book was clearly not for me and I don’t think I gained much from reading it.
In Family Trust, we follow the four perspectives of a wealthy Taiwanese-American family after the diagnosis of its patriarch, Stanley with cancer. Linda is Stanley’s ex-wife who resents him after 34 years of a thankless marriage. Fred is the eldest son, a man obsessed with increasing his social status and personal wealth, and Kate is the youngest daughter who struggles to balance taking care of her children, her office job, and her unemployed husband.
I know it can be unfair to compare books, but Family Trust is basically a less fun Crazy Rich Asians. I will acknowledge that my comparison is slightly unfair given that Kwan and Wang were going for completely different tones, but I couldn’t help remembering how much more enjoyable reading that book about rich Asians was to this one.
The characters in this book were intentionally unsympathetic which rarely works for me in a novel. While each of our perspectives was given moments of humanity and points where we could sympathize with them, I found that the majority of this book aimed at highlighting each character's worst attributes.
This applies mostly vividly to Fred, the social-climbing venture capitalists. I especially despised his chapters because Fred was just an awful person from start to finish. His obsession with wealth and status, and the ‘woe-is-me' attitude he had to being the poorest millionaire in his tax bracket quickly got on my nerves. His chapters were also filled with mind-numbing details about venture capitalism and investments making his perspective even more insufferable.
Linda and Kate were easier to read because I could actually sympathize with the struggles they faced throughout the novel. I actually liked seeing Linda’s attempts at a post-divorce romance and her reflections on her marriage and the amount she gave up to allow her husband to shine were interesting. Kate also had a fairly interesting subplot of her dealing with the domestic struggle of suspecting her husband of cheating. However, I will say Kate’s perspective was a bit too my the umbers to hold my interest towards the end of the novel But, even these more sympathetic characters love were laced with ugliness and cruelty, especially towards Stanley’s second wife.
To a certain extent, I accept that that was the point of this novel. I think Family Trust made me realize that without bombastic spectacle or fun hijinks I can’t really enjoy reading books about families who are cruel to each other and obsessed with money.
At its core, this book is an exploration of family and the messiness that comes with it. Wang had interesting things to say about this family. It was interesting to contrast the way each character saw themselves and how the rest of the family viewed their actions. I think this book had some interesting things to say about how callously we can treat our own family while still expecting support from them unconditionally. However, I was so uninvested in the characters that it didn’t land as successfully as it should have.
I don’t begrudge Family Trust’s existence and I’m glad to see books by Taiwanese-Americans about Taiwanese-Americans out there. I think in the hands of the right reader this could be someone’s favourite, I was just the completely wrong reader for this book.
In Family Trust, we follow the four perspectives of a wealthy Taiwanese-American family after the diagnosis of its patriarch, Stanley with cancer. Linda is Stanley’s ex-wife who resents him after 34 years of a thankless marriage. Fred is the eldest son, a man obsessed with increasing his social status and personal wealth, and Kate is the youngest daughter who struggles to balance taking care of her children, her office job, and her unemployed husband.
I know it can be unfair to compare books, but Family Trust is basically a less fun Crazy Rich Asians. I will acknowledge that my comparison is slightly unfair given that Kwan and Wang were going for completely different tones, but I couldn’t help remembering how much more enjoyable reading that book about rich Asians was to this one.
The characters in this book were intentionally unsympathetic which rarely works for me in a novel. While each of our perspectives was given moments of humanity and points where we could sympathize with them, I found that the majority of this book aimed at highlighting each character's worst attributes.
This applies mostly vividly to Fred, the social-climbing venture capitalists. I especially despised his chapters because Fred was just an awful person from start to finish. His obsession with wealth and status, and the ‘woe-is-me' attitude he had to being the poorest millionaire in his tax bracket quickly got on my nerves. His chapters were also filled with mind-numbing details about venture capitalism and investments making his perspective even more insufferable.
Linda and Kate were easier to read because I could actually sympathize with the struggles they faced throughout the novel. I actually liked seeing Linda’s attempts at a post-divorce romance and her reflections on her marriage and the amount she gave up to allow her husband to shine were interesting. Kate also had a fairly interesting subplot of her dealing with the domestic struggle of suspecting her husband of cheating. However, I will say Kate’s perspective was a bit too my the umbers to hold my interest towards the end of the novel But, even these more sympathetic characters love were laced with ugliness and cruelty, especially towards Stanley’s second wife.
To a certain extent, I accept that that was the point of this novel. I think Family Trust made me realize that without bombastic spectacle or fun hijinks I can’t really enjoy reading books about families who are cruel to each other and obsessed with money.
At its core, this book is an exploration of family and the messiness that comes with it. Wang had interesting things to say about this family. It was interesting to contrast the way each character saw themselves and how the rest of the family viewed their actions. I think this book had some interesting things to say about how callously we can treat our own family while still expecting support from them unconditionally. However, I was so uninvested in the characters that it didn’t land as successfully as it should have.
I don’t begrudge Family Trust’s existence and I’m glad to see books by Taiwanese-Americans about Taiwanese-Americans out there. I think in the hands of the right reader this could be someone’s favourite, I was just the completely wrong reader for this book.