Fiction: Jean Kwok

I kept seeing Jean Kwok's novel Searching for Sylvie Lee on recommended book lists, but alas the queue at the library was quite long, so I decided to try out her previous novel, Girl in Translation first. I'm glad I did - this is the type of Asian-American fiction that is squarely in my comfort zone - young Asian girl - recent immigrant or child of too-hard-working to be around much immigrants, succeeds in school, but never quite fits in, finds herself and her passion, but at the expense of love or the approval of her parents.  While Girl in Translation follows this formula, it is in no way rote or unimaginative.  There's a reason this story line is so popular - who doesn't love the struggle of a beautiful girl caught between two cultures, with so much promise, and so much obligation?  The writing and storytelling are easy to follow in a "beach read" way, but certainly not mindless.  This book left me wanting to read more by Jean Kwok, so I was quite happy to find Searching for Sylvie Lee waiting for me at the library.

When I was in college, I took a poetry class that was not my favorite.  I found I always wanted some background on the poet - what was s/he going through when they wrote the poem?  What was going on in the world they were living in at the time they wrote the poem?  What was the poem in response to?  What was the poet trying to say?  But every time I wondered these things, my professor - or other more sophisticated students - would inform me that a poem had to stand on its own, and it wasn't about what the poet intended, but what we took from the poem, without all of that background information.  I understood the point, but it didn't make me enjoy or understand the poems any better.  And so it often it when I read novels.  I wonder if the "fiction" is really "fiction."  Why did the author write THIS book about THESE characters?  People say "write what you know," and what is it that the author knew about the characters and places in this particular book?  And so it is with Searching for Sylvie Lee - about the perfect wife and sister who suddenly goes missing.  Her not-as-perfect sister, travels internationally not just to find her, but to find out more about the real life no one ever understood her sister was living.  After thoroughly enjoying Girl in Translation, there were parts of this book that just didn't seem right to me.  I couldn't quite connect to the characters, and felt uncomfortable about some of their relationships with each other - at the risk of including a spoiler, I won't go into it more, but I just could not relate.  But, it was because of this that I just did some brief internet research about the book - to see how it had been received, and it was there that I learned more about Kwok's background, and that she had suffered the disappearance of a sibling.  That she would then write this book is incredibly brave to me - I know it means that the book no longer stood on its own for me - but I don't care.  It made it fascinating and real, and so much more incredibly painful.  I cared more about what happened to Sylvie Lee, and what would become of her sister.  On its own, I don't think I would have appreciated this book as much as I did Girl in Translation, and maybe I didn't read it the way I was supposed to - with a little background - but that did help me connect better, and I do hope the process of writing the novel brought Kwok some much needed peace.