{"id":40077,"date":"2016-01-13T10:02:43","date_gmt":"2016-01-13T15:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=40077"},"modified":"2016-01-13T10:02:09","modified_gmt":"2016-01-13T15:02:09","slug":"the-expatriates-by-janice-y-k-lee-in-christian-science-monitor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-expatriates-by-janice-y-k-lee-in-christian-science-monitor\/","title":{"rendered":"The Expatriates by Janice Y.K. Lee [in Christian Science Monitor]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Expatriates<\/a>‘The Expatriates’ explores three overlapping lives in Hong Kong<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

While Janice Y.K. Lee\u2019s The Expatriates<\/em> might be one of your first reads of this new year, you will not be allowed to forget this book as 2016 draws to a close. Mark my words: The Expatriates<\/em> will appear repeatedly on year-end award nominations and all the \u201cbest of\u201d compilations.<\/p>\n

When it comes to novels, the Hong Kong-born, Harvard-educated, New York-domiciled Korean-American Lee is two for magnificent two: Her 2009 debut, The Piano Teacher<\/a><\/em>, garnered rave reviews and spent months on bestseller lists in 26 languages; her Expatriates<\/em>, which hits shelves this month, fulfills long-awaited anticipation and should meet with similar \u2013 if not even greater \u2013 success.<\/p>\n

Set decades after the World War II milieu of The Piano Teacher<\/em>, in The Expatriates<\/em> Lee returns again to Hong Kong, this time to a 21st-century setting populated with \u201cnew expatriates [who] arrive practically every hour\u00a0…\u00a0Chinese, Irish, French, Korean, American, a veritable UN of fortune-seekers, willing sheep, life-changers, come to find their future selves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amid this throng, three arrivals \u2013 all women for whom \u201chome\u201d remains stateside \u2013 will find their lives overlap and converge, in spite of different backgrounds, expectations, and outcomes. Somehow, over the course of two-plus years, they will eventually find themselves gathered in the same room, sharing the uncertainty of what lies ahead.<\/p>\n

Mercy Cho, a Korean-American from Queens, New York, arrived at age 24 to find that her Ivy League pedigree failed to open any doors to opportunity. In spite of her attempt to make a \u201cnew start,\u201d she\u2019s been unable to escape the \u201cbad luck\u201d that continues to plague her (irrationally, she knows) since she was 13. Her young life \u2013 so far \u2013 is defined by a horrific tragedy that will not allow her to move forward; survival for now means being sequestered in her \u201ctwo-hundred-square-foot studio, but she does not have to live like a savage,\u201d serving herself elegant salads to mollify the hunger that will not abate. \u201c[S]he wonders when she\u2019s supposed to start her life again, when she is allowed.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a few short months, Mercy helped to care for the children of Margaret Reade, who also arrived with her husband\u2019s multinational posting that took the family from northern California to this \u201chermetically sealed\u201d expat existence, \u201cas if they live in Hong Kong but are untouched by it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Margaret \u201con first glance seemed perfect.\u201d When Mercy initially meets her, Mercy is convinced that \u201cMargaret was one of those women who … didn\u2019t recognize a mean person, since no one would ever be mean to her, or snotty, or distracted…. She had never known condescension in her life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Margaret, her husband, their children, with Mercy accompanying, travel to Seoul, South Korea, for the winter holidays. There Margaret meets her extended relatives attached to her one-quarter Korean heritage \u2013 and loses her own immediate family as she knows it.<\/p>\n

Returning to Hong Kong, Margaret must reenter some semblance of normalcy. In one of her rare social outings, she attends a dinner party at the home of fellow expat Hilary Starr and her lawyer husband. Childhood acquaintances whose mothers were friends in California, Margaret and Hilary have not seen each other \u201cin years, maybe decades, until they ran into each other at the airport,\u201d both on their way to one of those exotic vacations expected of a certain privileged class of expats. While Hilary might be the wife who followed the hired spouse, her independent wealth provides her unexpected agency. The conclusion of that evening\u2019s soiree launches a point of no return in Hilary\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

Through unforeseen experiences and unintended meetings, these three women will come to share a relationship that can\u2019t be labeled, that would never have been chosen, and yet can never be denied.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Hong Kong is so small,\u2019\u201d its expat residents echo again and again. Little goes unseen in this temporary fishbowl existence of foreigners abroad. Lee\u2019s own intimate knowledge of Hong Kong\u2019s expat community \u2013 Lee\u2019s parents were Korean immigrants to the cosmopolitan island \u2013 is at turns illuminating, entertaining, cringe-inducing, piercing, all.<\/p>\n

With meticulous details and nuanced observations, Lee creates an exquisite novel of everyday lives in extraordinary circumstances. Friendship, love, marriage, parenthood are all momentous, defining events in so many human lives; so, too, are uncertainty, betrayal, loss, and more. How Lee\u2019s triumvirate reacts, copes, and ventures forth (or not) proves to be a stupendous feat of magnetic, transporting storytelling.<\/p>\n

Review<\/strong>: “\u2018The Expatriates\u2019 explores three overlapping lives in Hong Kong,” Christian Science Monitor<\/em>, January 12, 2016<\/a><\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘The Expatriates’ explores three overlapping lives in Hong Kong While Janice Y.K. Lee\u2019s The Expatriates might be one of your first reads of this new year, you will not be allowed to forget this book as 2016 draws to a close. Mark my words: The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,6781,38,6535],"tags":[82,83,84,6608,148,6782,10,11,51,25,2387,168,39],"class_list":["post-40077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-fiction","category-hong-kongese","category-korean-american","category-repost","tag-adoption","tag-assimilation","tag-betrayal","tag-bookdragon","tag-christian-science-monitor","tag-expatriates","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-identity","tag-immigration","tag-janice-y-k-lee","tag-kidnapping","tag-parent-child-relationship"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Expatriates by Janice Y.K. 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