The Family Chao (Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick)

by Lan Samantha Chang

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A reimagining of The Brothers Karamazov, The Family Chao successfully combines a propulsive literary mystery, a generational family drama, and the American immigrant story into one can't-put-it-down novel.

One of Literary Hub's and The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2022
A Goodreads Readers' Most Anticipated Mystery of 2022

An acclaimed storyteller returns with “a gorgeous and gripping literary mystery” that explores “family, betrayal, passion, race, culture and the American Dream” (Jean Kwok).

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393868074
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/01/2022
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	5,283
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Lan Samantha Chang is the award-winning author of the collection Hunger and the novels Inheritance and All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost. A recent Berlin Prize Fellow, and she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Chang is the first Asian American and the first female director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She lives in Iowa City.

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/06/2021

Chang follows up All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost with an ingenious and cunning reboot of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. The harrowing and humorous family drama is wrapped in a murder mystery about a family of Chinese immigrants headed by patriarch Leo Chao, who builds a successful Chinese restaurant in Haven, Wis., with his wife, Winnie. Like Leo’s Dostoyevskian equivalent, Fyodor Karamazov, he has three sons: the youngest, James, who’s lost his Mandarin; the middle, Ming, who now lives in Manhattan; and the eldest, Dagou, the restaurant’s head chef. All is not well in the family. The sons reunite in Haven for the annual Christmas party to find that Winnie has tired of her tyrannical husband and has left him to seek spiritual enlightenment. The locals, meanwhile, have turned on Leo, as well: some in response to his cutthroat business dealings, others out of racism. After the party, Leo turns up dead, the authorities suspect foul play, and Dagou is charged with murder. As in Dostoyevsky’s novel, there is a trial, and important Chao family secrets will come to light, but Chang retells the story in a manner all her own, adding incisive wit while retaining the pathos. In this timely, trenchant, and thoroughly entertaining book, an immigrant family’s dreams are paid for in blood. For Chang, this marks a triumphant return. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"A hilarious mystery that's also a searing take on assimilation and the American dream."

People Magazine

"Lan Samantha Chang’s The Family Chao is a modern-day Brothers Karamazov, a gorgeous and gripping literary mystery that leads the reader into a hall of mirrors, reflecting with its kaleidoscopic vision themes like family, betrayal, passion, race, culture and the American Dream. Devastating and searing, laugh-out-loud funny and profound, Chang’s latest novel is infused with beautiful, evocative writing that will quicken your heart and mind. A masterpiece."

Jean Kwok

"[A] sizzling...bravely unsentimental murder mystery about a Chinese American family in small-town Wisconsin."

Washington Post - Richard Lipez

"A playful literary romp with a serious heart. Ostensibly it's a murder mystery...but it’s also an exploration of genre, of literary types and stereotypes, and the impact of these types on the hopes and dreams of its characters... The action soars... Chang’s narrative [is] operatic and subversive."

Minneapolis Star Tribune - May-Lee Chai

"The Family Chao is a riveting character-driven novel that delves beautifully into human psychology; Dostoevsky himself would surely approve."

NPR - Ilana Masad

"[Chang] lives and writes to push the boundaries of her craft and her world... Her new novel is a genre bender: a murder story whose prose sings and snickers and soars as engagingly as Chang’s literary fiction."

Washington Post - Meredith Maran

"In this symphonic novel, Lan Samantha Chang gives us a multitude of souls lost and found: the gregarious are isolated, the ruthless are hunted, the voiceless scheme with hidden power, the innocent suffer from murderous desire. This is one of the finest and most ambitious novels about America I’ve read in recent years."

Yiyun Li

"Written in graceful prose and with astonishing perception, this novel is a must-read, a campaign against indifference, a journey into the heart of the American dream, and a page-turner. Candid, penetrating, refreshing."

T. Geronimo Johnson

"The Family Chao is riveting, delicious, full of love and danger, an intricate look at the so-called American Dream and one small-town American family trying and failing to save itself. Lan Samantha Chang’s characters are unforgettable: dear, maddening, funny, cruel. The Family Chao is an up-to-the-minute look at what it means to be accused and visible in America, and also an old-fashioned page-turner. A book to stay up late reading, and then to dream about."

Elizabeth McCracken

"Funny, thought-provoking and paced like a thriller, The Family Chao radically redefines the immigrant novel while balancing entertainment and delight."

BookPage (starred review)

"A Dickensian drama of family conflicts and intrigues; an insightful comedy of the American immigrant experience, and of a small town’s inner workings. Chang’s creation of characters through dialogue is worthy of a great playwright."

John Irving

"Family drama, murder mystery, love story, The Family Chao is an oftentimes funny and sometimes sad portrait of a Chinese American family who runs that most ubiquitous of institutions: the Chinese restaurant. With nuance and slyness, wit and empathy, Chang turns the desires and deceits of one unhappy family into a moving and compelling saga of that classic American illness: ambition."

Viet Thanh Nguyen

"I loved Lan Samantha Chang’s The Family Chao, at once a brilliant reimagining of Dostoevsky and a wholly original and gripping story about the passions, rivalries, and searing pressures that roil a singular immigrant family."

Jess Walter

"[Chang] turns the tired truism about every town having a Chinese restaurant on its head... Beautifully executed."

Los Angeles Times - Bethanne Patrick

★ 2022-01-12
A Chinese American family reckons with its patriarch’s murder in this modern-day reboot of The Brothers Karamazov.

When James, the youngest of the three Chao brothers, returns home to Wisconsin from college for Christmas, he’s braced for drama. His imperious, abrasive father, Leo, has driven his mother to a Buddhist sanctuary. The middle brother, Ming, made his fortune in New York to escape the family’s orbit and is only grudgingly visiting. And the eldest brother, Dagou, has labored at the family restaurant for years in hopes of a stake in the business only to be publicly rebuffed by Leo. Leo is murderously frustrating, so it’s not exactly surprising when he’s found dead, trapped in the restaurant’s freezer room, its escape key suspiciously absent. Chang’s well-turned third novel neatly balances two substantial themes. One is the blast radius of family dysfunction; the novel is largely told from James’ (more innocent) perspective, but Chang deftly shows how each of the brothers, and the partners, exes, and onlookers around them, struggles to make sense of Leo and his death. (Handily, the plural of Chao is chaos.) The second is the way anti-immigrant attitudes warp the truth and place additional pressure on an overstressed family: When one of the brothers faces trial for Leo’s death, news reports and local gossip are full of crude stereotypes about the “Brothers Karamahjong” and rumors of the restaurant serving dog meat. As with Dostoevsky’s original, the story culminates in a trial that becomes a stage for broader debates over obligation, morality, and family. But Chang is excellent at exploring this at a more intimate level as well. A later plot twist deepens the tension and concludes a story that smartly offers only gray areas in response to society’s demands for simplicity and assurance.

A disruptive, sardonic take on the assimilation story.

Kirkus Reviews