“Discussing the tenuous relationship between first generation immigrant parents and their hip young offspring, this debut novel is sympathetic without being saccharine and constitutes a fantastic portrait of intergenerational cultural friction” – TATLER (Ireland) 2008
(Review of FFFM for the UK paperback -Hutchinson-Random House)
This was sent to me today, and I found it so fun that I thought I’d share it.
Copies of the UK paperback are sold at the newsstand at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong. Now, I’ve never been to Hong Kong, but I thought it was good that the book is resting in such fancy digs.
M.J.L.
A few days ago, I reviewed a terrific book by Josh Ozersky called The Hamburger (Yale University Press) for The Times (London).
Unexpected and fun news:
In May, Free Food For Millionaires was No. 8 on the Fiction Bestseller list in Malaysia.
I hope your summer is terrific.
M.J.L.
The U.S. paperback of FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES will be released on April 9th. It has a new cover designed by the talented art director Anne Twomey of Grand Central, and copies should be at bookstores near you presently. There’s a new essay in VOGUE this month (April 2008) titled “Weighing In” in its Up Front column. I’ll be in the States starting the 9th for the nationwide paperback tour. I hope you’ll swing by the events and say hello. I look forward to seeing you, and thank you for your kind support.
M.J.L.
I recently had the opportunity to write an essay about WONDER WOMAN for The TIMES (London) which was great fun, and it made the cover.
Free Food For Millionaires was a selection for the Wall Street Journal JUGGLE Book Club, and there is a Q&A with the reporter Sara Schaefer-Munoz. I thought Schaefer-Munoz’s four essays on the book were marvelous and thought-provoking.
Wonder Woman: Love and Murder by Jodi Picoult
Min Jin Lee on Leaders, Good Girls and the Discomforts of Wealth
The book has been included in the following year end lists. My profound thanks to all, and I wish you a happy new year.
“Top 10 Books of 2007” – USA TODAY
“Year’s Best Books” – NPR’s FRESH AIR
“Editor’s Fiction Favorites for 2007” – THE BLOOMSBURY REVIEW
“Best Recommended List” – CRITICAL MASS, THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS’ CIRCLE
“Favorite Fiction of 2007” – CHICAGO TRIBUNE
“Favorite Books of the Year” – CHICAGO SUN TIMES
“Auspicious Debut” – 2007 BOOK SENSE PICK HIGHLIGHTS
“Auspicious Debut” – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Notable Books of 2007” – SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“Best Novels of the Year” and “THE TIMES Christmas Choice” – THE TIMES (London)
“Favorite Novels of 2007” – LARGEHEARTEDBOY.COM
Wonderful Book Club News:
FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES is a selection of the Juggle Book Club of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
My family and I moved to Tokyo in late August, and three months have raced by. Boxes remain unpacked, but everyone is settling in. Already, we’ve had two sets of wonderful houseguests, and we prepare for dear friends to arrive at the end of the month to help celebrate our first Christmas in Japan. As for the writing life, there was a personal essay in VOGUE in November about millinery and my father. Essays are forthcoming in the 2008 anthologies, WALK THIS WAY (ed. Rebecca Walker) about the new American family and WHY I’M A DEMOCRAT (ed. Susan Mulcahy)—a benefit collection for Katrina victims.
Happy news: In the States, FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES was included in the year-end round up for best fiction of 2007 in THE BLOOMSBURY REVIEW and in the inaugural Best Recommended List of CRITICAL MASS, the website of THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS’ CIRCLE, and was a Favorite Books of 2007 in the CHICAGO TRIBUNE. It was a Notable Book of 2007 in the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE. On NPR’s FRESH AIR, it was included in book critic Maureen Corrigan’s list of eight best novels of the year. It was an Auspicious Debut in the 2007 BOOK SENSE PICK HIGHLIGHTS and in PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. In the UK, the book was selected by THE TIMES (London) as one of the ten best novels of the year and is a Christmas Choice.
The book in translation will be released in South Korea (Magellan) and Italy (Einaudi) presently. The paperback will be released in the United States in April 2008.
I hope this note finds you and your loved ones very well in the holiday season.
Liesl Schillinger, reviews Free Food for Millionaires in the New York Times Book Review (“Korean War” July 1, 2007).
I am grateful for Schillinger’s intelligent essay. She begins:
“In Korean tradition, there’s a complicated emotion called han which, by general consensus, applies chiefly to women. A recently published Korean commonplace book defines it as ‘resentment, sorrow, sense of loss and hardship, stifled passion and love, or the frustration of the downtrodden.’ A woman who manages to overcome these obstacles is said to have “resolved her han.” In 21st-century American terms, this is what Oprah would call ‘living your best life.’In her accomplished and engrossing first novel, the Yale-and-Georgetown-law-educated writer Min Jin Lee tells the story of an angry young Korean-American woman, raised by status-conscious immigrant parents in Queens, who falls out with them after she graduates from Princeton. Not only does this heroine harbor han, she embodies it — her name is Casey Han.”
Schillinger continues:
“In their differing temperaments, Casey and Ella recall the seesaw sisters in ‘Middlemarch’ or ‘Pride and Prejudice’ — foolishly idealistic Dorothea versus sensible Celia; headstrong Lizzy Bennet versus amiable Jane. But the men in their lives aren’t as tidily classifiable as Casaubon, Chettam, Darcy or Bingley. Nor is marriage the girls’ primary goal. Like the author herself, Casey and Ella are modern women whose definition of happiness includes career satisfaction and personal fulfillment — both of which can be harder to secure than a man with a ring.”
Another generous quotation:
“It would be remarkable if she had simply written a long novel that was as easy to devour as a 19th-century romance — packed with tales of flouted parental expectations, fluctuating female friendships and rivalries, ephemeral (and longer-lasting) romantic hopes and losses, and high-stakes career gambles. But Lee intensifies her drama by setting it against an unfamiliar backdrop: the tightly knit social world of Korean immigrants, whose children strive to blend into their American foreground without clashing with their distinctive background. It’s a feat of coordination and contrast that could kill a chameleon, but Lee pulls it off with conviction.”
Read the entire review at the New York Times
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