Take a photo of a barcode or cover
thesummer 's review for:
Last Tang Standing
by Lauren Ho
I enjoyed this so much! Marathoned it in one night. The publishing pitch for this was Crazy Rich Asians meets Bridget Jones' Diary. It's only similar to Crazy Rich Asians in the sense that it's a contemporary novel set in Singapore about an ethnically Chinese main character and parts of the novel satirize Chinese culture--which is to say, not very similar at all. (But I suppose that's just the sad state of our publishing world right now. Think about all the novels about white people set in contemporary America that satirize American culture. There are so many, and they're so different from each other.) In reality, the genres of the two are different--I'd classify this as a contemporary romance novel while Crazy Rich Asians is a comedy of manners; this is about the specific band of middle class Asians whose parents slave drive them into becoming high-pressured, exhausted lawyers and investment bankers who are trying really hard to make partner before the age of 35, while Crazy Rich Asians is about rich people who inherit a role in their family business. The two classes are totally different and lead to totally different satire (though horrible aunties at family functions seems to be common to both). It does resemble Bridget Jones' Diary in that it is set up as a diary; the joke is that the protagonist gets herself into embarrassing situations, is bad at adulting, and drinks a lot; and in narrative tone.
I think my Chinese friends will find a lot of the jokes way too spot-on and relatable (my other East and South Asian friends will too--there's a lot of similarities between the cultures), and all audiences will, I'm sure, find the novel hilarious. The prose can be a bit verbose at times; more Douglas Adams than Jane Austen/ Kevin Kwan's elegance.
I really liked that the novel talked about both the savoury and unsavoury parts of Chinese culture. For instance, a lot of my parents' generation can be pretty racist, and the novel expressed that truthfully--the "you can be friends with non-Chinese people, but you can't marry them" mentality is fairly common (more so in Asia than among the diaspora out West). On our visits home to China, given how cosmopolitan parts of Asia are, it's not uncommon to hear of Chinese people of my generation marrying South Asians, and when news of this kind is divulged at a dinner party by the parents in question, the reactions from their friends range from "my condolences" to questions about the future grandchildrens' skin colour (I feel like most Asians could not have been surprised during that part of Meghan Markle & Oprah's interview).
The actual romance parts of the novel are good but nothing exceptional; it's the humour, satire, and rich cultural grounding that elevate the book to a four star experience.
I quite liked Andrea's character and development. It was very Michelle Obama's Becoming vibes. The combination of low self-esteem and constantly trying to please her family on subjects where her primary question should have been her happiness rather than their perceptions was really well written. It would have been nice to see some other perspectives on the question of dealing with common pitfalls in asian parenting. Some asian kids try to please their parents their whole lives like Andrea, going to the right schools and becoming lawyers/doctors/investment bankers; others find compromises to end up in life situations where they find happiness and fulfillment while having a stable/ prestigious enough job to satisfy their family; some say screw it all and go into art; and many asian parents don't put anywhere near that kind of pressure on their kids at all.
My main criticism is that the novel was too long. The last third of the book could have been compressed a lot. The endgame relationship started to feel repetitive and lose emotional steam, I stopped being invested in the other person in the love triangle way before that relationship ended, I started to get mad at the protagonist for being so dumb, unperceptive, and unreflective about her life, etc. Though I really liked our protagonist's character development arc, it was plotted in such a way that all you see is her mounting but totally unconscious unhappiness with her life throughout most of the novel without movement or character development; the big realization and changes and development don't happen until the very end.
One random quibble: maybe I'm just a goody two shoes, but I thought Andrea used alcohol to cope with things in an unhealthy way, and it's just never addressed? I guess it could just be the high powered lawyer culture (Wolf of Wall Street is my point of reference for these things lol) / for comic effect, but surely when one drinks to the point of incoherency that often, it's a problem?
I think my Chinese friends will find a lot of the jokes way too spot-on and relatable (my other East and South Asian friends will too--there's a lot of similarities between the cultures), and all audiences will, I'm sure, find the novel hilarious. The prose can be a bit verbose at times; more Douglas Adams than Jane Austen/ Kevin Kwan's elegance.
I really liked that the novel talked about both the savoury and unsavoury parts of Chinese culture. For instance, a lot of my parents' generation can be pretty racist, and the novel expressed that truthfully--the "you can be friends with non-Chinese people, but you can't marry them" mentality is fairly common (more so in Asia than among the diaspora out West). On our visits home to China, given how cosmopolitan parts of Asia are, it's not uncommon to hear of Chinese people of my generation marrying South Asians, and when news of this kind is divulged at a dinner party by the parents in question, the reactions from their friends range from "my condolences" to questions about the future grandchildrens' skin colour (I feel like most Asians could not have been surprised during that part of Meghan Markle & Oprah's interview).
The actual romance parts of the novel are good but nothing exceptional; it's the humour, satire, and rich cultural grounding that elevate the book to a four star experience.
I quite liked Andrea's character and development. It was very Michelle Obama's Becoming vibes.
Spoiler
I wonder how many high-strung corporate lawyers slaving away at 100-hour work weeks to try to become partners eventually realize they hate their jobs and switch to the non-profit sector?My main criticism is that the novel was too long. The last third of the book could have been compressed a lot. The endgame relationship started to feel repetitive and lose emotional steam, I stopped being invested in the other person in the love triangle way before that relationship ended, I started to get mad at the protagonist for being so dumb, unperceptive, and unreflective about her life, etc. Though I really liked our protagonist's character development arc, it was plotted in such a way that all you see is her mounting but totally unconscious unhappiness with her life throughout most of the novel without movement or character development; the big realization and changes and development don't happen until the very end.
One random quibble: maybe I'm just a goody two shoes, but I thought Andrea used alcohol to cope with things in an unhealthy way, and it's just never addressed? I guess it could just be the high powered lawyer culture (Wolf of Wall Street is my point of reference for these things lol) / for comic effect, but surely when one drinks to the point of incoherency that often, it's a problem?