Free Food for Millionaires Reviewed in New York Times Book Review
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
filed under: 
