Synopsis
When 73-year-old matriarch Magnolia Chen sweeps into the family Chinese New Year celebration with a woman on her arm that she introduces as her girlfriend, shockwaves ripple through the room. But her 16-year-old granddaughter Izzy, black sheep of the clan, is far more intrigued than angry.
Later that evening Magnolia begins to tell Izzy her story: sent from Indonesia to Los Angeles in her teens, she met Ellery O’Shea, her best friend, her safe space, the love of her life. What unfolds from there will shock Izzy to her core but also give her a new understanding of the meaning of love, loyalty and sacrifice.
Review
I did not expect this one to hit me as hard as it did. This took me to the extremes of emotion. Laughter and tears.
This is not a romance. It is a love story.
This is basically a coming-of-age account told to a granddaughter that starts in 1995 after her grandmother causes ripples as the undisputed matriarch of the Chen family when she brings a caucasion woman as her date.
We start in Indonesia and then go to LA at 16. We cover first crushes, friendships, complicated sister dynamics, and strained parental relationships.
We then stretch into adulthood and finding your place and freedom – if that’s possible for someone who has been groomed from birth to be a wife first and foremost.
This has a sapphic romance that centres this plot as Magnolia, Meimei, Tulip (all the grandmother) navigates Indonesian patriarchal culture, the insidiousness of heteronormativity, education, and growing up feeling different.
The only thing worse than unrequited love is not realizing you’re in love in the first place. Burying that love so deep inside you that it becomes unrecognizable, even to yourself, then wondering why you are festering from the inside out.
I appreciated how Magnolia struggled with feeling like a fraud with her identity in terms of both culture, ethnicity, sexuality, gender. Even daughter and sister and wife.
This is filled with silliness, uncertainty, and raw honesty. It felt like someone was spilling their secrets to me. It read authentically.
“It took years for me to consider what is even the point of being ‘normal’? The only reason to be ‘normal’ is to make everyone else around you comfortable. Putting everyone else, even strangers, before yourself.”
Having read the author’s cosy, funny mysteries; I admit I wasn’t expecting to be ripped apart.
Devastating, but also so perfect.
I found the epilogue slightly cheesy, but it did feel cathartic.
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