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
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