Trapped Between Two Worlds
WEBER, KATHARINE
Trapped Between Tw o Worlds Free Food for Millionaires By Min Jin Lee Warner. 562 pp. $24.99. Reviewed by Katharine Weber Author, “Triangle,” “The Little Women,” “The Music...
...Yet despite her publisher’s claims of literariness, in a recent interview posted on the Web site of the Asian American Writers Workshop she says: “I read a lot of books where I think the writer is really clever, but I don’t care...
...As a career strategy, the statement is either misguided or disingenuous...
...Inexplicably—for in spots her book captures the big feelings and the big ideas in the best Balzacian sense—Lee seems not to grasp the difference between what is “too literary” and what is boring...
...She may have been so determined to express the important ideas, so ambitious to write an immense and moving novel, that in her disdain for the lyrical she rushed right by the necessity to write as well as possible...
...Docile Leah, who possesses “a soft oval face,” pleads with her husband and daughter to calm down, but wonders: “How could the girl be so stupid...
...She also developed a taste for the lifestyle of a rich girl, and is always cultivating strategies for indulging her intense yearning...
...Of course not...
...The opposite of literary and lyrical is not banal and careless...
...Instead she embarks on a forced march away from its roots in vain pursuit of something ever flashier and ever grander...
...This introductory scene ends with Joseph hitting Casey’s (presumably ovalshaped) face in a rage at her insolence...
...Surely the winner of the Veech Prize for Fiction can do better than describe every other female character of Korean heritage as having an “oval-shaped face...
...She runs off to Jay’s apartment, lets herself in, and finds him enjoying a threesome with “an attractive redhead” and “a pretty blonde...
...Meanwhile Tina, the good younger daughter who doesn’t rock the boat, “pressed the fine features of her oval face into her folded hands...
...If anything, it brings to mind Herman Wouk’s bestselling and decidedly unliterary Marjorie Morningstar...
...What was the point of being good at school if she couldn’t understand timing or the idea of finessing a difficult person...
...During her four years at Princeton on scholarship, Casey learned how to look and sound like an Ivy League product...
...But Joseph and Leah Han have cautious dreams for their two daughters...
...Some of them are impressively convincing and surprising...
...They looked like girls she and Jay could have known from school, but prettier than Princeton girls...
...Jay Currie, her wealthy white boyfriend, is by contrast so entitled that he is oblivious to the easiness of his path after graduation...
...Joseph, “his shimmering eyes unblinking,” demands of Casey, “You think you know more about life and how you should live...
...You can sit on your high horse and say ‘I’m a language writer’ So your writing is very lyrical and beautiful but you don’t believe in plot or characterization or emotional truth...
...Reviewed by Katharine Weber Author, “Triangle,” “The Little Women,” “The Music Lesson...
...It’s that good...
...Like its heroine, Free Food for Millionaires— the title comes from a custom at the Wall Street firm where Casey works that has whichever equities desk brokers a big deal provide a lavish lunch for everyone in the department—is trapped between two worlds...
...others function more like talking scenery...
...Her parents work long days in a dry cleaning establishment, their English is poor, and their limited social lives revolve around their church community...
...According to the jacket flap Lee went to Yale, “where she was awarded both the Wright Prize for Nonfiction and the Veech Prize for Fiction...
...I think that’s great but I don’t want to read it...
...Will she marry Jay and live happily in his privileged cocoon...
...The opening chapter launches immediately into what is a traditional family fight over a traditional family dinner in the Queens, New York, apartment where Casey no longer feels she belongs...
...The Cover on the advance reading copy of Free Food For Millionaires tells reviewers: “An epic, page-turning American story of class, society and identity, this debut brings to mind Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus...
...And it is true that Lee’s loose, baggy monster of a novel offers readers the viewpoints of a vast assortment of characters...
...To me, this is the reason why literary fiction has snotted themselves [sic] out of existence...
...The publisher further declares that the book is “modeled after the kind of 19th-century novel where you see every character’s point of view...
...Several other impressive literary awards, garnered elsewhere, are similarly heralded...
...But seeing “every character’s point of view” does not make this a 19thcentury novel any more than an ethnic wedding scene makes it worthy of comparison with the muscular and precise Goodbye, Columbus...
...Lee is not content to have her novel merely emerge from a traditional heritage...
...thesis adviser, Columbia School of the Arts MFA Program Casey Han, the central character in Min Jin Lee’s much hyped modern melting pot tale, is a 22-year-old KoreanAmerican magna cum laude Princeton graduate with a degree in economics and an impressive golf handicap...
Vol. 90 • August 2007 • No. 3
