Crazy Rich Asians

Marriage, Materialism, Madness

Kevin Kwan’s wicked romcom, Crazy Rich Asians, came out on 2013, but the movie is out this year and making waves for being the first in over two decades with a completely Asian cast. So, now’s a good time to read the book.

Rachel Chu is an innocent in the world of the super rich Chinese community of Singapore. She has been raised in the US by a single mother, and studied her way up to becoming an economics professor. She starts dating fellow professor, the handsome Nicholas ‘Nick’ Young, without having any clue that he belong to one of those crazy rich Asian families. The kind of people who live in palatial homes served hand and foot by armies of silent domestic help, belong to exclusive clubs, travel by private jets, wear only designer outfits and jewellery and send their kids abroad to study. They also marry into similarly wealthy families; the old money Chinese looking down at the new rich.

When Nick invites Rachel for a summer vacation to Singapore, where he is to be best man at his friend Colin Khoo’s wedding to supermodel Araminta Lee, she has no idea what she is in for.  She does not know that the Khoo wedding is being treated as the event of the year by the Singapore press and the Chinese community. The first inkling of Nick’s double life comes when they travel in a luxurious private cabin, which he explains away as using up his frequent flier miles.

Nick plan to take her to Singapore is overheard by a Chinese woman at the next table in a restaurant, and sets off the gossip grapevine through social media. Rachel does not realise that her imminent arrival as the very eligible Nick’s girlfriend has set off mini landmines in his family and their social set. His mother Eleanor is so upset, that she decides to go off on spa weekend with her friends to avoid meeting Rachel before she has found out just who she is and which family she belongs to.  When it is revealed to the curious Singaporeans that Rachel is not a rich Taiwanese, but an ordinary Chinese-American, she is slotted as gold-digger and treated with disdain bordering on cruelty by the other fashionable young women and their mothers, who are hoping to snag Nick and be connected with the affluent and powerful Young clan.

She is, however, treated with kindness by Colin and Araminta, Nick’s cousin Astrid (whose marriage to ‘commoner’ Mike is going through a strain), Colin’s sister Sophie, and Rachel’s former college mate Peik Lin, whose nouveau riche family is not considered worthy of note by the condescending snobs.

Nick’s formidable grandmother Su Yi controls the family’s fortune and guards their privacy so fiercely that Tyersall Park, her colonial palace set on a huge estate in the heart of Singapore, does not show up on Google Maps. She is dead against Nick marrying a girl who does not belong to the right family.

The love story between Nick stays at the centre, but around them the moneyed folk in their circle splurge on real estate, gadgets, planes, yachts, and clothes worth millions—probably keeping the couture houses of France and Italy afloat. Their lives are grand beyond imagination, and Kwan occasionally tips into satire when he writes about Nick’s friend throwing a vulgar bachelor party for Colin, and Araminta taking her friends on a lavish bachelorette weekend that tests Rachel’s equanimity to breaking point.

The book opens with a hilarious episode in which a racist hotel manager refuses to let Eleanor Young and her group into the suite they booked at a posh hotel;  her brother-in-law Harry Leong, simply buys the property right off from the aristocratic English owner. Needless to say the nasty manager is fired on the spot. Kwan keeps up the humour through the book, as well as a social commentary that must have opened the eyes of the world to the materialistic—and perhaps spiritually empty-- lives led by the Chinese in Singapore.

The book was such a success (so is the movie) that Kwan wrote two sequels,China Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems.

Crazy Rich Asians

By Kevin Kwan

Publisher: Doubleday

Pages: 416

All We Ever Wanted

The Conscience Keeper

Bestselling writer Emily Giffin’s new novel, All We Ever Wanted, is reminiscent of the incident in the Delhi school, where a boy shared a smutty video of a girl with his friends. It blew up into a scandal and brought into focus the evil  side of the telecom revolution in India.

In this book, told from the point of view of three characters, at the centre of the storm is Finch Browning, a rich kid, who posts a nasty and racist picture of a classmate; it is shared over social media and the repercussions could wreck his future. The girl is Lyla, the American-Brazilian daughter of a carpenter, Tom Volpe, who has raised her alone after his wife ran off.

Finch’s father, Kirk, is the typical arrogant businessman, who believes every problem can be solved by throwing money at it. But his wife, Nina, who came from humble beginnings, is shattered by her son’s behavior and genuinely concerned about Lyla.

The elite school where Finch and Lyla study (she on financial aid), takes the incident very seriously and the principal summons Finch for an honour council hearing. If found guilty, he would be expelled and lose his admission to Princeton, that his parents are so proud of.

Tom is furious and demands punishment for Finch, but, the strange thing is that Lyla is not all that concerned. She thinks all teens go through some embarrassing incidents like this, and nobody really cares in the long run. She not just tries to stop her father from going ballistic, but also gets extra friendly with Finch, who claims to be attracted to her.

Lyla feels that if her father and Nina had just let things slide, they would not have aggravated things to the point of a crisis. She is tough and resilient, though except for her friendship with one loyal girl called Grace, her place in the school full of rich snobs is not something Giffin goes into. Teens can be exceptionally cruel to one who falls outside their circle, but Lyla is miraculously spared the barbs.

Nina’s life unravels, however, as she discovers that her husband and son are not the kind of men she would have liked them to be. Unlike Lyla who sees things only from her own perspective, Nina is aware of the way a patriarchal and racist society looks at women. Tom is torn between his love for his daughter and his helplessness in trying to understand her mental state.

The most admirable and sympathetic character her is Nina (the bit about her past was not at all necessary to explain her mindset), whose first instinct is not to shield her son, but to see to it that justice is done to Lyla. Such people are seldom found outside of films and fiction.

All We Ever Wanted

By Emily Giffin

Publisher: Ballantine

Pages: 352

The Perfect Couple

An Imperfect Love Story

Bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand has set her latest novel The Perfect Couple on the beautiful island of Nantucket, where she lives. The breathtaking beachfront has palatial properties of the rich and famous, but the island is also small enough for everyone to know everyone’s secrets.

Celeste Otis, the quiet, intelligent and loving daughter of the close-knit, middle-class Otis family, is thrown into this world of luxury when she is wooed by Benjamin Winbury, the younger son of banker Tag and celebrity writer of mystery books, Greer Garrison.

Their wedding is fixed, and entirely paid for by the Winburys, who may have their own internal problems, but  are nothing but gracious and kind to the somewhat wide-eyed Celeste and her parents, Bruce and Karen. Preparations for the lavish wedding are on, when Celeste’s best friend and maid-of-honour, Merritt Monaco is found on the beach, dead by drowning. The groom’s buddy and best man Shooter Uxley, first vanishes and then reappears as abruptly, with no alibi to explain his absence.

The book alternates between the romance between Benji and Celeste and the investigation into Merritt’s death by the local cops. Benji introduces her to a high-flying life that she, with her salary as an official at a zoo, could never have dreamt of.  He is charmed by her innocence, and she by his sheer kindness; unlike many other wealthy, trust fund guys, he is down to earth and even slightly embarrassed by his swish lifestyle. The outgoing Merritt with her partying ways, is the exact opposite of Celeste, which is perhaps what gets them to love and trust each other like sisters.

The two families and their closest friends gather at, Summerland, the splendid Winbury property on Nantucket, where things seem calm on the surface, but secrets are bubbling underneath. All of them, including Benji’s brother Thomas and his wife Abbie and a flamboyant but broke “friend of the family” Featherleigh Dale, have had either a reason or an opportunity to murder Merritt.

When the police chief Ed Kapenash and detective Nick “The Greek”  Diamantopoulos (with his film star good looks) start their questioning, they uncover a tangled web that leaves them baffled.

The book, first of all, shows that there is no such thing as a perfect couple. Celeste’s mother Karen, dying of cancer, believed her marriage of thirty years was perfect, but overhears her husband reveal his sordid secret. Tag and Thomas are anything but perfect husbands.

It may have the structure of a whodunit, but the novel also looks at class differences, broken families and rootless young people in their social media bubble. The intricate jigsaw puzzle that Hilderbrand lays out with her back-and-forth timeline, does not actually fit together, which is the best part of the novel.  The Perfect Couple is a quite satisfying, one-sitting read.

The Perfect Couple

By Elin Hilderbrand

Published by: Little Brown & Co

Pages: 480

Cottage By The Sea

After The Storm

Debbie Macomber has based Cottage By The Sea, on a real incident in 2014, when a landslide in near Oso, Washington, took with it forty-nine homes and killed all the residents.

In the book, Annie Marlow, who drops out of going home for Thanksgiving to hang out with her friends in California, finds the next day that her entire family has been wiped out. How does anyone cope with a tragedy of this magnitude? Annie has a loving aunt and a cousin Gabby to help her, but the depth of her grief is too much to bear.

She decides to go to the happy place she remembers as a child, the pretty beach town of Oceanside, where the family used to spend vacations. By a stroke of fortune she gets a job as a physician’s assistant in the local clinic and with the intervention of a man called Keaton, manages to rent the very cottage of her memories.

Keaton was abused as a child and has grown up to be a silent, taciturn man, who is more of a misfit because of his size—he is huge! His only friend are school mate Preston, and the severely agoraphobic Mellie, who is the owner of the cottage Annie rents. She does not remember him, but Keaton had seen her as a teenager and fallen in love with her. He becomes her main pillar of support as she tries to put the tragedy behind her and build her life afresh.

Macomber has written it in a simple, no-frills style—the little joys and sorrows of a small town, where Annie tries to belong. There are speed bumps in her tender relationship with Keaton and the stormy friendship with Mellie, but it all works out in the story that is basically a modern-day fairytale romance. A good holiday read.

Cottage By The Sea

By Debbie Macomber

Publisher: Ballantine

Pages: 352