Synopsis
The residents of Haven, Wisconsin, have dined on the Fine Chao restaurant’s delicious Americanized Chinese food for thirty-five years, content to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. Whether or not Big Leo Chao is honest, or his wife, Winnie, is happy, their food tastes good and their three sons earned scholarships to respectable colleges. But when the brothers reunite in Haven, the Chao family’s secrets and simmering resentments erupt at last.
Before long, brash, charismatic, and tyrannical patriarch Leo is found dead—presumed murdered—and his sons find they’ve drawn the exacting gaze of the entire town. The ensuing trial brings to light potential motives for all three brothers: Dagou, the restaurant’s reckless head chef; Ming, financially successful but personally tortured; and the youngest, gentle but lost college student James. As the spotlight on the brothers tightens—and the family dog meets an unexpected fate—Dagou, Ming, and James must reckon with the legacy of their father’s outsized appetites and their own future survival.
Brimming with heartbreak, comedy, and suspense, The Family Chao offers a kaleidoscopic, highly entertaining portrait of a Chinese American family grappling with the dark undercurrents of a seemingly pleasant small town.
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Review
I have mixed emotions about this book. It started off slow but then started getting interesting especially when Leo Chao is found dead. Couldn’t have happened to a “nicer” fellow. Actually, he was quite a narcissist and the town was truly better off without him. Anyway, the mystery portion is probably tied to how he could have died; was it an accident, or was it murder? I did find this quote described Leo quite well:
Your father was the consummate American id, an insatiable narcissist, a shameless capitalist who wanted to screw everyone.
This family was quite dysfunctional and I wasn’t sure I liked many of the characters. James was probably my favorite character of them all with Ming not too far behind. They weren’t without their own faults and issues, but they seemed a bit more normal compared to the rest of the family.
This town in Wisconsin has racist issues especially toward those of Asian descent. There are countless mentions of bullying of the boys when in school and even as adults, there is a scene that could be considered bullying if what was said is true. I don’t want to give away too much so you’ll have to read the book.
Dagou, the oldest son, only wants what is due to him based on his father’s promises when he came back to help run the restaurant. But considering Leo’s character and other comments he makes at the beginning, it is easy to see why he wasn’t liked and why Dagou was doing what he could to get what rightfully his, at least in his eyes.
Katherine is of Chinese descent but was adopted and raised by a white family. She tries to find a tie to her cultural background through Dagou and his family. While I think it is noble that she is searching for roots and where she fits in, I think she was trying too hard and needed to find a balance between her ethnicity and her adopted family.
There is a scene at the beginning where James helps an older man try and find his family but the man dies before they can get on the train. James ends up with this man’s bag but it just seems to go missing in the story until about 2/3 of the way into the book. There are brief mentions here and there, but I kept wondering what happened to that bag considering the hints that are shared tied to the contents.
The characters deal with trust, loyalty, mental illness, love, and loss throughout the book. There are reflections on racism, immigration, and cultural differences that we can all learn a little something from the topics.
Overall, we give this 3 1/2 paws up.
About the Author
Lan Samantha Chang was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, and attended college at Yale where she earned her bachelor’s degree in East Asian Studies. She worked in publishing in New York City briefly before getting her MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was a Wallace E. Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford. She is currently the Elizabeth M. Stanley Professor in the Arts at the University of Iowa and the Director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the first woman, and the first Asian American, to hold that position.
Chang’s first book is a novella and short stories, titled Hunger (1998). The stories are set in the US and China, and they explore home, family, and loss. The New York Times Book Review called it “Elegant.… A delicately calculated balance sheet of the losses and gains of immigrants whose lives are stretched between two radically different cultures.” The Washington Post called it “A work of gorgeous, enduring prose.” Her first novel, Inheritance (2004), is about a family torn apart by the Japanese invasion during World War II. The Boston Globe said: “The story…is foreign in its historical sweep and social detail but universal in its emotional truth.” Chang’s latest novel, All Is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost (2011), follows two poets and their friendship as they explore the depths and costs of making art. The book received a starred review from Booklist and praise: “Among the many threads Chang elegantly pursues—the fraught relationships between mentors and students, the value of poetry, the price of ambition—it is her indelible portrait of the loneliness of artistic endeavor that will haunt readers the most in this exquisitely written novel about the poet’s lot.” Chang’s fourth book and third novel, The Family Chao, is forthcoming in 2022.
Chang has received fellowships from MacDowell, the American Library in Paris, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
As the fifth director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Chang has been fundamental to the increase of racial, cultural, and aesthetic diversity within the program, and has mentored a number of emerging writers. In 2019, she received the Michael J. Brody Award and the Regents’ Award for Excellence from the University of Iowa.
