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More copies of this ISBN:This title in other formats:Midnight at the Dragon Cafeby Judy Fong Bates
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Judy Fong Bates's fresh and engaging first novel is the story of Su-Jen Chou, a Chinese girl growing up the only daughter of an unhappy and isolated immigrant family in a small Ontario town in the 1950s. Through Su-Jen's eyes we see the hard life behind the scenes at the Dragon Cafe, the local diner her family runs. Her half-brother Lee-Kung smolders under the responsibilities he must carry as the dutiful Chinese son. Her mother, beautiful but bitter, lays her hopes and dreams on Su-Jen's shoulders, until she turns to find solace in the most forbidden of places, while Su-Jen's elderly father strives to hek fuh, swallow bitterness, and save face at all costs. Review:"In this deeply affecting debut novel by the author of the short story collection China Dog, intrepid Su-Jen Chou, the only daughter of parents who flee Communist China in the 1950s to become proprietors of a Chinese restaurant in an isolated Ontario town, watches as her family unravels. In Irvine, it is 'so quiet you can hear the dead,' and Su-Jen's mother, Jing, beautiful and bitter, laments her imprisonment in an unfamiliar country. To Jing's chagrin, Su-Jen's father, Hing-Wun, much older than his wife, believes in the traditional method for obtaining wealth: endless hard work. When Su-Jen's handsome older half-brother, Lee-Kung, comes to live with the family and help out in the restaurant, Su-Jen is happy, but soon she notices her mother and Lee-Kung exchanging veiled glances and realizes they're keeping some dangerous secret. Increasingly, Su-Jen finds herself caught between her parents, who have 'settled into an uneasy and distant relationship...their love, their tenderness, they give to their daughter.' She seeks relief in books and in the Chinese tales her father loves to tell, but the trouble festering comes to a head when a mail-order bride arrives for her brother. Bates conveys with pathos and generosity the anger, disappointment, vulnerability and pride of people struggling to balance duty and passion." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"The mounting suspense of family secrets makes this first novel a breathless read....The haunting characters in that lonely greasy spoon evoke a tradition stretching back to Carson McCullers." Booklist (Starred Review) Review:"Deeply satisfying: a lovely sensuality pervades in spite of the harshness of the world Bates portrays so eloquently. Kirkus Reviews Review:"Fong Bates has emerged with her first novel, a work that often reads like the best finely crafted memoir." Globe and Mail Review:"[Judy Fong Bates] has been compared with Alice Munro because of her controlled prose and the currents of feeling that seethe beneath the surface of her fictional Ontario town." Vancouver Sun Review:"Su-Jen's guilelessness and reluctant awakening to the dark realities around her are utterly believable. And in spite of the sometimes heinous acts they commit, Su-Jen's family members still manage to evoke our sympathy." Quill & Quire Review:"[Judy Fong Bates's] prose is unornamented and exact, sometimes catching the light, other times as transparent as glass to let us see into the Dragon Café" National Post Review:"Judy Fong Bates has created a novel that does what the very best fiction can do — take us into a world we could not have otherwise entered; put us among people we could not otherwise know. As quintessentially Canadian as Alice Munro, and equally delightful to read." Shyam Selvadurai About the AuthorJudy Fong Bates is the author of the short story collection China Dog: And Other Tales from a Chinese Laundry. Stories from that collection have been broadcast on CBC Radio. Judy Fong Bates lives in Toronto. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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