Synopses & Reviews
With dazzling wit and compassion, Gish Jen author of the highly acclaimed novels
Typical American and
Mona in the Promised Land looks at ambition and compromise at century's end and finds that much of the action is as familiar and as strange as the things we know to be most deeply true about ourselves.
The stories in Who's Irish? show us the children of immigrants looking wonderingly at their parents' efforts to assimilate, while the older generation asks how so much selfless hard work on their part can have yielded them offspring who'd sooner drop out of life than succeed at it.
Review
"This is a great way to introduce readers to Jen, and her fans will be happy to have these new stories, each of which is a tiny window on a busy world." Library Journal
Review
"Perceptive and sharply detailed stories that inhabit the boundary between nostalgia and resentment that is the exile's true domain without falling into either." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Ms. Jen...has a keen eye for the incongruities of contemporary life....[S]he gives us a gently satiric look at the American Dream and its fallout." Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
Review
"Gish Jen's fiction is always engaging, always necessary." Newsday
Synopsis
"Sparkling--a gently satiric look at the American Dream and its fallout on those who pursue it."--The New York Times
With dazzling wit and compassion, Gish Jen--author of the highly acclaimed novels Typical American and Mona in the Promised Land--looks at ambition and compromise at century's end and finds that much of the action is as familiar--and as strange--as the things we know to be most deeply true about ourselves.
The stories in Who's Irish? show us the children of immigrants looking wonderingly at their parents' efforts to assimilate, while the older generation asks how so much selfless hard work on their part can have yielded them offspring who'd sooner drop out of life than succeed at it.
Synopsis
The stories inWho's Irish?show us the children of immigrants looking wonderingly at their parents' efforts to assimilate, while the older generation asks how so much selfless hard work on their part can have yielded them offspring who'd sooner drop out of life than succeed at it.
With dazzling wit and compassion, Gish Jen author of the acclaimed novelsTypical AmericanandMona in the Promised Land looks at ambition and compromise at century's end and finds that much of the action is as familiar and as strange as the things we know to be most deeply true about ourselves."
Synopsis
In this dazzling collection of short stories, the award-winning author of the acclaimed novels Thank You, Mr. Nixon and Mona in the Promised Land--presents a sparkling ... gently satiric look at the American Dream and its fallout on those who pursue it (The New York Times).
The stories in
Who's Irish? show us the children of immigrants looking wonderingly at their parents' efforts to assimilate, while the older generation asks how so much selfless hard work on their part can have yielded them offspring who'd sooner drop out of life than succeed at it.
With dazzling wit and compassion, Gish Jen looks at ambition and compromise at century's end and finds that much of the action is as familiar--and as strange--as the things we know to be most deeply true about ourselves.
About the Author
Gish Jen is the author of the novels Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land, The Love Wife and Who's Irish?, a book of stories. Her honors include the Lannan Award for Fiction and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives with her husband and two children in Cambridge, Massachusetts.