~ The Wangs vs The World, by Jade Chang ~
This is quite a long novel, 49 chapters in 350 plus pages of close set typescript, but having finished it, it seems to have gone nowhere. The plotline runs that Charles Wang, whose family left China for Taiwan to escape communism, and who left Taiwan for America where he made it big in the cosmetics industry, has now lost all his wealth. He and his second wife drive cross country to reach New York, where his eldest daughter, Saina, lives. En route they pick up the two younger children, Andrew and Grace, from university and from boarding school, respectively. Arriving at Saina’s house, Charles at once goes to China on his own to reclaim Wang family land. Ending up in hospital, he summons his family and the novel ends with them all in Beijing in a hospital around his bed.
It is not clear whether Jade Change intended to, but she has created a cast of caricatures, with no real personalities to identify with, much less sympathise with. She does try to give each character their own word space time, and back stories, which in theory should make them more ‘real’, and yet, for some reason, this falls rather flat. Curiously so, because this is not an unintelligently written novel. There is commentary buried here, and a careful avoidance of easy clichés or slapstick. Perhaps the problem lies in that the novel does not know whether it is writing Asian-American literary fiction, or comedy-social satire. It seems to fall between two stools somehow, just missing its mark either way.
Much happens, but meaninglessly. First Andrew refuses to have sex with one woman, then he has sex with another woman, and yet this does not seem to lead anywhere or mean anything. Supposedly a road accident while driving cross country is an epiphany of some kind, but that too does not work, and is unconvincing. There are many lengthy incidences included which add nothing to the plotline, and do not tie back in even at the end. To say the end is open-ended would be an understatement – there are no resolutions, no results. Everything which matters is just left hanging midway, for no clear reason.
A lot seems to be told to the reader in the course of this lengthy novel for the sake of telling, without any point to the telling. A good editor would have helped a lot, cutting the novel down to a fraction of its length and keeping it to only points that matter, that go somewhere. The writing is by no means bad, but the pointlessness of the plotline does leave the reader wondering what the purpose is of reading this novel, what the novel may be trying to say. (Having finished it, this reader has come away pretty much with nothing; it was not a bad experience, but it was not a good experience, it was just a time consuming experience from which little is learnt or felt or derived.)
There are regular insertions of Mandarin phrases in some of the characters’ speeches which are not translated, though it is unclear why not; might this detract for those readers who cannot speak Mandarin? Some of that information is useful and even necessary in following the plot, and it goes beyond mere words or nouns. (If the insertion of Mandarin dialogue is there for some cultural verisimilitude, then providing a translation would be helpful and would hardly detract from the effect.) The chapter numbers are written in Chinese characters, again without any clear reason or purpose for this, and it is unsure what is being achieved by so doing.
The author shows potential – there is a lot of thought underpinning all this ring-a-ring-of-roses. But perhaps the author simple needs to be more daring, to be incisive, to commit, to comment, and not just hedge and edge and tiptoe and gesture. The novel is about as successful as Andrew is as stand up comedy. But like him, it really does have potential to do so very much better, and to end up worth watching.
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