Real Americans | Rachel Khong

Another book that appears on many "best of the year" lists and it's a pretty good multigenerational family tale, with a little bit of Chinese history. I love the structure of stories told in parts from different character perspectives. This one starts with Lily, an unpaid media intern in NYC, Chinese-American, in the run-up to Y2K (remember that?) who meets an attractive man at an office party. They date, romance ensues, and it's not until they're at the point of getting married that she learns he's heir to a huge pharmaceutical fortune. Uncomfortable with his wealth, he uses his middle name as his last name.

Questions arise when they marry and try to start a family. Through IVF they have a son, and Lily observes that there's a connection between her family (her parents were scientists/geneticists) and Matthew's. Part 2 clips ahead to when Lily is a single mom raising the aforementioned son on a small island in Washington State. We meet Nick when he's 15 and he discovers the identity of his father (who he thought was not interested in knowing him), and we follow him into adulthood. We don't learn about why Lily is a single parent until the end of Nick's story. Part 3 is the story of Lily's mother and tells the story of her flight, with Lily's father, during the Cultural Revolution, and their adjustment to being parents to Lily and life in America. We don't learn about how the two families were connected until Lily's mother, May, finishes telling her story to Nick.

The questions of why are we who we are, how do we get that way all figure in this story. The writing is great, and the links between these three generations are like little Easter eggs sprinkled throughout the story. The story is very readable and Khong does a great job building suspense. It's a page-turner. Some aspects of the story are either given too little attention or time. Others seem to take up a little more space than they need. There's a magical realism nugget about time literally standing still, and the characters talk about what they do with that extra time. It's an intriguing idea.

I wouldn't call it the best book of the year, but it was a good read. I would be a good book group book with a few different paths for discussion.