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A review by liralen
My Summer of Love and Misfortune by Lindsay Wong
2.0
So, Iris: the thing you need to know about Iris is that if she can simultaneously flunk all her classes, ruin her nicest dress, ruin somebody else's nicest dress, crash a car, rack up an enormous bill on a credit card someone else is paying for, gorge herself with 'delicious' food of any variety, and spill said food all over herself...she will. And if she can't, not to worry! There's always tomorrow.
I have to think that Iris's over-the-top-ness is intentional. She's...not the brightest crayon in the box, is she? Skips half her classes and puts zero effort into the rest and blows off her SATs and scribbles some nonsense as an admissions essay and still expects to get into every Ivy and be declared valedictorian. Thinks Tiananmen Square is nothing but a great selfie spot. Throws money (never her own money) at every problem. Can't understand why it's a problem that the first thing she does upon staying with relatives is explore a stranger's room and try on all her very expensive clothes. She's exhausting. Her fleeting moments of insight only last until they make her brain hurt (roughly 3.5 seconds later) and she sets them aside.
Iris could maybe, if she worked at it for the entire book, rise up from her starting point to someone you'd want to spend more than two minutes with. But she doesn't—she stays self-absorbed and shallow and willfully ignorant for the vast majority of the book, having money and new clothing and god knows what else thrown her way, and then does an about-face and raises some money for the less privileged (on behalf of a very rich corporation that could donate that same amount of money and not even notice) and becomes hard-working and lauded for her efforts. All in the span of...a few pages? It comes way too late, and with way too little effort or insight, to be believable. Would that Iris hadn't spent so much of the book locked in her over-the-top-ness.
Side note: the book descriptions are not the most accurate, are they? They imply that Iris's parents aren't at their wits' end, that Iris has ever thought about her Chinese-American identity, that she cares about tourist attractions (unless she can buy something expensive there—truly, this is a girl who is disappointed to learn that you can't buy the contents of a museum), and that Iris is surprised to find herself among the wealthy instead of assuming that she's finally being rewarded for being such a spectacular human being.
I have to think that Iris's over-the-top-ness is intentional. She's...not the brightest crayon in the box, is she? Skips half her classes and puts zero effort into the rest and blows off her SATs and scribbles some nonsense as an admissions essay and still expects to get into every Ivy and be declared valedictorian. Thinks Tiananmen Square is nothing but a great selfie spot. Throws money (never her own money) at every problem. Can't understand why it's a problem that the first thing she does upon staying with relatives is explore a stranger's room and try on all her very expensive clothes. She's exhausting. Her fleeting moments of insight only last until they make her brain hurt (roughly 3.5 seconds later) and she sets them aside.
Iris could maybe, if she worked at it for the entire book, rise up from her starting point to someone you'd want to spend more than two minutes with. But she doesn't—she stays self-absorbed and shallow and willfully ignorant for the vast majority of the book, having money and new clothing and god knows what else thrown her way, and then does an about-face and raises some money for the less privileged (on behalf of a very rich corporation that could donate that same amount of money and not even notice) and becomes hard-working and lauded for her efforts. All in the span of...a few pages? It comes way too late, and with way too little effort or insight, to be believable. Would that Iris hadn't spent so much of the book locked in her over-the-top-ness.
Side note: the book descriptions are not the most accurate, are they? They imply that Iris's parents aren't at their wits' end, that Iris has ever thought about her Chinese-American identity, that she cares about tourist attractions (unless she can buy something expensive there—truly, this is a girl who is disappointed to learn that you can't buy the contents of a museum), and that Iris is surprised to find herself among the wealthy instead of assuming that she's finally being rewarded for being such a spectacular human being.