Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

With a heatwave going on and a wonderful long weekend underway, I wanted a fun summer read. I have been curious about this book ever since I read that the movie was greenlit.

This book is definitely the an easy to read summer novel. It has fun travel writing about Singapore and Asia including discussion about its food, fashion, and its people. The last one being the prime focus. The setting and many of the characters in this book are so 1% that this is practically a fantasy novel for most of this world. The families at the centre of the novel are soap operatic in their lineage, marriage traditions, and schemes.

The author really knows how to describe Chinese people and Chinese culture. It knows the ugly sides of it and the good side of it, but the book revels too much in the bad sides. Rich nasty people are everywhere though. The narratives switch every chapter and it took me some time to get use to the third person omniscient narration. The writing was not as smooth in that respect, but the dialogue is decent. Some of the characters show promise but there was a lot of time where I had to glaze over the idiots. There are one too many unlikable characters and most of them are rather one-note. They are one-note Chinese though.

I enjoyed the book for the easy pace and I came to appreciate a lot of the customs, dialogue, food, and language in the book. I haven’t read a novel focussed around Asians like this in awhile and definitely not in this setting. This book has the most Cantonese in any Western book. It’s satirical and fun. By the end of it, I had become attached to some of the characters. The book is not going to win best literary award this year; however, I do think I will read the sequels between all my other non-fiction ones.

Read July 2-3, 2018.

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