The Bellow-Roth Equation
Michael Scharf writing about Free Food for Millionaires in Publisher’s Weekly:
Lee’s book is actually a lot more ambitious than Goodbye, Columbus (1959). The protagonist is a Korean-American woman named Casey Han, who is the Ivy-educated, “unusually tall” first daughter of a Queens emigré couple, husband-and-wife managers of a Manhattan dry cleaning franchise. (Managers, not owners. One of the things that’s so impressive about the book is the deft detail it goes into on such matters as how Korean owners of dry cleaning concerns hook, and keep, such couples as the Hans—down to the differences in pay between husband and wife, and how much of that money is kept on and off the books.) The book focuses on Casey’s post-collegiate path in the wake of being disowned, but its scope is kaleidoscopic, and its scale is (as also promised on the back cover) very 19th century, with Lee flashing in and out of the heads of a very large cast.
Read the rest at Publisher’s Weekly
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