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A review by strawbe_rese
The Love Wife by Gish Jen
3.0
The Modern Family
The Love wife by Gish Jen published by Vintage Contemporaries in 2005
This book tells the story of a nontraditional American family and how they deal with not only the idiosyncrasies found in any family’s make up, but with the specific difficulties faced by an interracial couple made up of Asian American Carnegie and European American Jane, better known as Blondie. Their family is made up of their one biological baby Bailey and two adopted, Asian daughters Wendy and Lizzy, as well as the strong minded mother-in-law. While some of the problems this family is dealing with, such as their eldest daughter’s rebellious nature, are what are to be expected and faced by any family, blended or not, they have the added difficulty of handling cross cultural interactions when a woman from China, Lan, is brought into the family for questionable reasons by the husband’s mother Mama Wong.
One of the most interesting aspects to this story is the insight to the culture clash between Lan and the family. With the introduction of Lan, not only do we see America through her opinions, we are able to see deeper into the characters themselves, such as Blondie’s enthusiasm to take in Lan’s opinions, going so far as to donate three of the family’s possessions everyday after hearing Lan speak of not needing so much stuff.
Jen uses a few offbeat stylistic choices that for some may be off putting, such as, instead of the traditional parentheses to signal dialogue, she uses a dash before each piece of speaking. While not impossible to follow the conversation, I still found myself never quite getting used to this structure and feel it did not really add anything to the story. In fact, I think it slightly took away from my reaction to the story since I always noticed it so it pulled my attention from the story and also the dialogue would have less emphasis and meld in with the rest of the writing because of this.
Another stylistic choice that may either work for a reader or throw them off is the constant shift of narrators. The upside to this style is it really gives an immediate and often fascinating insight to a single event as it takes place and we flick between different characters reactions. The downside with this style is that often I found that while reading longer passages, I would need to backtrack to remember who was speaking.
While the story has its ups and downs with style, I found that there was a truly interesting interaction between the many characters. This is definitely a book for readers fascinated by culture clash in everyday situations such as those experienced between Lan and the family, as well as struggles of life between immigrant parents and their Americanized children and how the effects of that can ripple into the future life of the child.
The Love wife by Gish Jen published by Vintage Contemporaries in 2005
This book tells the story of a nontraditional American family and how they deal with not only the idiosyncrasies found in any family’s make up, but with the specific difficulties faced by an interracial couple made up of Asian American Carnegie and European American Jane, better known as Blondie. Their family is made up of their one biological baby Bailey and two adopted, Asian daughters Wendy and Lizzy, as well as the strong minded mother-in-law. While some of the problems this family is dealing with, such as their eldest daughter’s rebellious nature, are what are to be expected and faced by any family, blended or not, they have the added difficulty of handling cross cultural interactions when a woman from China, Lan, is brought into the family for questionable reasons by the husband’s mother Mama Wong.
One of the most interesting aspects to this story is the insight to the culture clash between Lan and the family. With the introduction of Lan, not only do we see America through her opinions, we are able to see deeper into the characters themselves, such as Blondie’s enthusiasm to take in Lan’s opinions, going so far as to donate three of the family’s possessions everyday after hearing Lan speak of not needing so much stuff.
Jen uses a few offbeat stylistic choices that for some may be off putting, such as, instead of the traditional parentheses to signal dialogue, she uses a dash before each piece of speaking. While not impossible to follow the conversation, I still found myself never quite getting used to this structure and feel it did not really add anything to the story. In fact, I think it slightly took away from my reaction to the story since I always noticed it so it pulled my attention from the story and also the dialogue would have less emphasis and meld in with the rest of the writing because of this.
Another stylistic choice that may either work for a reader or throw them off is the constant shift of narrators. The upside to this style is it really gives an immediate and often fascinating insight to a single event as it takes place and we flick between different characters reactions. The downside with this style is that often I found that while reading longer passages, I would need to backtrack to remember who was speaking.
While the story has its ups and downs with style, I found that there was a truly interesting interaction between the many characters. This is definitely a book for readers fascinated by culture clash in everyday situations such as those experienced between Lan and the family, as well as struggles of life between immigrant parents and their Americanized children and how the effects of that can ripple into the future life of the child.