'As easy to devour as a 19th century romance - packed with flouted parental expectations, fluctuating female friendships and rivalries, ephemeral romantic hopes and losses and high-stakes career gambles. 'Ambitious, accomplished and engrossing.' New York Times Book Review
Casey Han's years at Princeton have given her 'a refined diction, an enviable golf handicap, wealthy friends, a popular white boyfriend, and a magna cum laude degree in economics.But no job, and a number of bad habits...'
The elder daughter of working-class Korean immigrants who run a dry cleaning shop in Manhattan, Casey inhabits a New York a world away from that of her parents. Ambitious, spirited and obstinate, she's developed a taste for a lifestyle - and a passion for beautiful hats and expensive tailoring - she hasn't the means to sustain. And between the culture to which her family so fiercely cling and the life she aspires to, Casey must confront her own identity, the meaning of wealth, and what she really wants from her future.
As Casey navigates an uneven course of small triumphs and spectacular failures, a clash of values, ideals and ambitions plays out against the colourful backdrop of New York society, it's many layers, shades and divides.
'Min Jin Lee explores the most fundamental crisis of immigrants' children: how to bridge a generation gap so wide it is measured in oceans ... an insight into the secret world of Korean America ... and there is pleasure to be derived from it's heroine's peregrinations as she reconciles her desires with the conventions of her family' Observer
'Exquisitely evoked ... an American story full of class struggle, rugged individualism, social status and the haves and have-nots. Most of all, it's an epic meditation on love ... in all its tenacious and painful glory' USA Today