NOVEL PAIRING
The Expatriates by Janice Y. K. Lee
I really enjoyed Lee’s first novel, The Piano Teacher, and so approached her new one with enthusiasm. It too is wonderful, but in a different way. Set in the present rather than the past, it details the daily lives over the course of a year of three expatriate women living in Hong Kong. Like Anne Beattie, whose own stories delineate the fine structure of daily life, Lee knows this turf and her novel is rich with references to specific shops, clubs, and neighborhoods. Two of these women are acquainted at the start (Mercy had worked for Margaret), but by the end all three, Mercy, Margaret, and Hilary, have intersected.
It is a novel mostly about motherhood—the angst of wanting a child, the tentativeness of trying out a child on loan, and the pain of losing a child coupled with, in Margaret’s case, the joys of cuddling and cosseting one’s existing children. But it’s also a depiction of being an outsider in a culture, even if, like Mercy, you are half Asian. I felt that Lee kept the reader at a distance from her characters; you knew their lives and habits, but you didn’t inhabit them.
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Like Lee, Celeste Ng is a mother as well as a writer. This first novel, winner of several awards, is a poignant story about a mixed race family in Ohio in the late 1970’s. Husband James is Chinese American and wife Marilyn, a Caucasian from Virginia. James and their three children stick out in small town Middlewood and each must deal with being singled out and looking different. Sixteen year old Lydia bears the heavy weight of unrealistic parental expectations and when she goes missing, the family implodes. It’s a book that makes one reflect on the sometimes unspoken demands we place on our children to their detriment. Sobering and yet believable. Marilyn is something of a Tiger mother.
SARASOTA SAMPLER
Expanding our local dining forays, but, we hope, not our waistlines, we tried two new restaurants this past week.
Yume in downtown Sarasota is a perfect choice for a Japanese lunch. Among the four of us, we enjoyed several lunch specials: chicken teriyaki and the eel, accompanied by rice and stir fried vegetables plus a small green salad or miso soup, and the spicy tuna roll with a side of seaweed salad. Prices are very reasonable and the restaurant was not crowded. Their longer menu also includes some Thai dishes.
Mozaic. This is one of Sarasota’s fine dining restaurants (read a bit more expensive) and we ate here before the opera. The menu is more creative than some other places, and we were pleased with what we ordered. I thought the sautéed shrimp over lemon risotto was very tasty, and my spouse loved the crab cake salad and his side of lamb merguez sausage.
SMALL SCREEN SCRIBBLES
Mercy Street. So far, I’d give this series a B, maybe a B+, but not an A. It’s PBS’s first attempt at this kind of historical series and they just haven’t done it like the Brits do. I’ve now watched the first three episodes.
Downton Abbey. I’m mourning the end of Downton Abbey and the finale is still 24 hours away! I thought last week’s episode was one of the best and was particularly struck by the scene between Mary and her grandmother. The dowager duchess opines about love and its importance in one’s life and then gives her granddaughter a hug. Hugs are seldom seen between these folks, and I found this one touching and somehow very right.
