A Cross-Atlantic Immigrant Mystery

Searching for Sylvie Lee     Jean Kwok     (2019)

Jean Kwok sets up a tantalizing mystery while at the same time constructing a moving story about an immigrant family in today’s highly mobile global economy.

The mystery:  Successful 30-something New Yorker Sylvie Lee has disappeared on a trip to the Netherlands to visit her dying grandmother. Her younger sister, Amy, flies to Amsterdam to look for her. This mystery component keeps the pages turning as chapters skip back and forth in time, presenting alternating narrators.

The immigrant family:  Originally from China, the extended Lee and Tan families emigrated to the Netherlands and to the United States more than a quarter century ago. Members of the younger generation are assimilated and fluent in multiple languages but still face bigotry in both countries. As one Chinese American character puts it, “I think that wherever you are, to live in the world as a white person is a completely different experience than a person of color. Discrimination is invisible to them because it does not affect them. They are truly shocked.” (227)

The dual settings (Amsterdam and NYC) add a layer of interest, since the attitudes toward immigrants have both similarities and differences. Social class is another factor. Even though Sylvie attended all the right schools and landed high-paying jobs, she laments, “I never mastered the art of the graceful shrug, the careless indifference of those who summered on private islands and tied clove hitches on sailboats.” (198)

I found the syntax and word choice in this novel particularly arresting. With each chapter, the language changes to suit the narrator of that chapter. So, when Ma, the mother of Sylvie and Amy, narrates, the sentences are shorter, with nouns often lacking articles, because Ma speaks very little English. The invoking of proverbs—such as “Those who wish to eat honey must suffer the sting of the bees” (198)—also varies. Ma’s narrative is chock full of traditional sayings, but the more Westernized Sylvie and Amy cite proverbs somewhat less often. The characters whose native language is Dutch speak in sentences that mimic the patterns of that language. Of course, we’re reading the words of fictional Dutch speakers, who are speaking Dutch that has been “translated” by Jean Kwok into English.

The fine character development in Searching for Sylvie Lee overshadows any deficiencies in the plot department, so I won’t downgrade the novel for its few melodramatic twists. In the end, Amy concludes: “How my knowledge of Sylvie, of Ma, of myself has changed. We had all been hidden behind the curtain of language and culture: from each other, from ourselves. I have learned that though the curtains in the Netherlands are always open, there is much that can be concealed in broad daylight.” (312)

For reviews of other fiction about immigrants, click on Immigrant Stories in the Archive column on the right. For another novel that combines mystery with the immigrant experience, see my post reviewing The Other Americans by Laila Lalami.

Brexit's Effects on Britons

Middle England     Jonathan Coe     (2018)

The Brexit crisis in the United Kingdom fascinates me. I’ve been following all the convoluted negotiations by reading the Guardian news online, and I’ve learned more about arcane parliamentary practices than I ever thought possible. So when I noticed that a recent novel by Jonathan Coe was billed as a satire on Brexit, I immediately reserved it at my local public library.

Fear not, however, if you have little interest in Britain’s attempts to leave the European Union. Since Coe is an accomplished writer, Middle England is a perfectly fine family drama, set against the background of contemporary British cultural and political events. (The extended Trotter family and their friends have been the subject of two previous novels by Coe, but it isn’t necessary that you read those novels to follow the family dynamics.) The 50-something siblings Benjamin and Lois Trotter are depressive types even in the best of times, and Coe’s exploration of their relationships is compassionate.

Starting in 2010, Coe traces eight years in the lives of Britons of all political stripes, from bigoted, anti-immigration Brexiteers to self-righteous left-wing crusaders. He skewers them all, even as he demonstrates how the Brexit issue has divided people and damaged relationships. Friendships are shattered, and one married couple in the novel actually separate because of their political differences. Yet other characters refuse to allow Brexit to enter their bedrooms. Some scenes in Middle England are played straight, and others are piercingly satirical. The chapters that feature a left-wing newspaper writer interviewing an obfuscating communications staffer from the office of former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron had me laughing out loud.

In current British political writing, “Middle England” is somewhat analogous to “Middle America,” referring to middle-class and lower-middle class citizens who do not live in urban centers—in this case, London. Some find that “Middle England” also refers to a geographic region in the Midlands region of England. For me, the title of Coe’s work has additional resonances:

• JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth (mentioned several times in the novel)

• Political moderation (as distinct from rabid right-wing or left wing stances)

• Middle English from the Middle Ages (evoking the glorious literary heritage of Britain, hence nostalgic nationalism, hence isolationism, hence Brexit)

Jonathan Coe writes in a British tradition of razor sharp observers of the contemporary human condition. If you like his approach, you might also like the work of Penelope Lively or Margaret Drabble or Joanna Trollope. Or use the new Search Box at the top of this page to find all the British novels I’ve reviewed.

A Classic Russo Novel

Chances Are . . .     Richard Russo     (2019)

Novelist Richard Russo was born in 1949, so he has first-hand knowledge of the worlds of his characters who were also born in 1949 and who are turning 66 in the year 2015. That’s when Chances Are . . . opens, as three friends—Lincoln, Teddy, and Mickey—get together on Martha’s Vineyard over Labor Day weekend. Haunting them is the unsolved disappearance of Jacy, a young woman they all went to college with. Jacy has not been seen since Memorial Day weekend of 1971, right after the four graduated from the fictional Minerva College in Connecticut.

The 1957 pop hit from Johnny Mathis, “Chances Are,” threads its way through this novel. The song itself is mentioned several times, but the operation of sheer chance also affects each of the characters.

For example, males who were born in 1949 were subject to the first national draft lottery, which occurred on December 1, 1969. This spectacle, which was broadcast live on television, determined which men would be inducted into the military, and its primary purpose was to provide soldiers for the escalating Vietnam War while also responding to complaints that wealthier, more educated young men received preferential treatment in required military service. The lottery was a wrenching event for those whose birthdays were being drawn, supposedly randomly. Men who had a low number among the 366 birthdays would be drafted and very likely sent to a brutal jungle war zone in southeast Asia. Those who had a high number were spared. Those with a number somewhere in between didn’t know what direction their lives would take.

Lincoln, Teddy, and Mickey learn their draft fates in front of a grainy black and white television set on that day in 1969. But other chance encounters and near-misses also shape this story, which moves effortlessly between the late 1960s-early 1970s and May of 2015. Russo is masterful in portraying the interior states of contemporary American men—unsparing in revealing their weaknesses but also unapologetic in showing their strengths. All three men in Chances Are . . . were in love with Jacy, and inevitably their return to the site of her disappearance stirs up memories both painful and sublime.

The final resolution and revelation of the Jacy mystery is a little more pat than I usually expect from Russo, but the character studies in this novel demonstrate complete command. He situates Lincoln, Teddy, and Mickey on a gorgeous island, hangs over them some ugly unknowns, and then shows how these ordinary though distinctive guys react.

Richard Russo is one of my favorite authors; you can read my reviews of some of his other works here.