“There’s even a Matisse in the cabin!” drools Eddie Cheng, who is boastfully borrowing the plane from his friend Leo. Eddie, named Edison by his seriously Anglophile and social-climbing Hong Kong family, would be the most money-mad character in Mr. Kwan’s story if “Crazy Rich Asians” were not full of them. But Eddie’s not the one who has given the names Astor, Trump and Vanderbilt to his dogs.
“Crazy Rich Asians” offers refreshing nouveau voyeurism to readers who long ago burned out on American and English aspirational fantasies. Mr. Kwan either knows, or does a good job of pretending to know, how the very rich of Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai show off their lucre. Since he is not spoilsport enough to bring moralizing into such a story, readers never need worry how the king of Thailand gave two live human beings, trained as lady’s maids, to the richest old Singaporean granny in the book.
“Crazy Rich Asians” first flaunts its peacock feathers in a prologue set in London in 1986. Shabby-looking members of the Young family are treated rudely in an elite hotel. They promptly pull strings and buy the place, which may mean that the Dowager Marchioness of Uckfield, then in residence, may have to find somewhere else to stay in the future.
Flash forward to 2010, when one of the Young boys, Nicholas, has grown up to have “perfectly tousled black hair, chiseled Cantonese pop-idol features, and impossibly thick eyelashes.” He also has a career as an academic in the United States and a girlfriend named Rachel Chu.
Rachel is what is called an “ABC” (American-Born Chinese), and she is too innocent to have wondered much about Nick’s family. The plot of the book basically describes how Nick brings Rachel to Singapore to show her how eye-poppingly loaded and snobbish his relatives are. “Everyone will adore you, Rachel,” Nick promises. “I just know it.” This turns out to be hilarious, under the circumstances.
Rachel’s naïveté gives “Crazy Rich Asians” an excuse to explain all things Asian and expensive to the touristy reader. And Mr. Kwan neither has nor wants a light touch. About the wedding of Nick’s fashion-plate sister, Astrid, he writes that “there were anonymous reports that Sir Paul McCartney flew in to serenade the bride at a ceremony that was ‘exquisite beyond belief.’ ” Another character, Araminta, has a mother known as “the luxury hotel queen” and is referred to in Singapore as “our most celebrated fashion icon,” even though her mainland Chinese heritage is held against her.
There’s also a family friend who supposedly “flies all her saris back to New Delhi to be specially cleaned,” and another who “looks like a Chinese Catherine Deneuve, only more beautiful.” This book name-drops about many different Asian cultures and mixes rude slang from Malay and the Cantonese and Hokkien dialects of Chinese. It also sniffs at American culture (Stanford: “It’s that school in California for people who can’t get into Harvard”) and wears its prejudices on its designer sleeve (“Mark’s not white, he’s Jewish — that’s basically Asian.”). Words like Chuppie, for Chinese Yuppie, may be offensive, but Mr. Kwan makes the most of them.
Almost no material object appears in “Crazy Rich Asians” without an announcement of its brand name. And one of the strangest things about this book is how insecure its Asian residents seem to be. Sure, shoe designers have their place in American beach reading, but Mr. Kwan works them into dialogue, not descriptions. So we get: “Parker, put down those Pierre Hardy flats or I’ll poke your eyes out with these Nicholas Kirkwood stilettos.” And: “I wouldn’t have worn my new Roger Vivier heels if I knew we were coming to a place like this.” And, from a man unhappy with his suite at the Wynn Macau: “I’m not going to dirty my Tod’s setting foot in one of those rat holes!”There’s even a poor little rich kid who, when told to wear his Gucci loafers, asks plaintively: “Which ones?”
Obviously, the romance of Nick and Rachel is only ancillary to the real (and really crazy) concerns of “Crazy Rich Asians.” All Rachel has to do is ignore the hostility of her likely future relatives, see Nick for the nice guy he truly is and admire the excess without wondering why everyone seems so pitifully materialistic and insecure. She hits the right note as soon as she gets to the airport in Singapore and remarks that it “makes JFK look like Mogadishu.” This book is neither malicious nor imaginative enough to make Rachel a gold digger or Nick a cad. So its main objective is to provide a grand tour of a humorously grandiose and showoffy world.
Mr. Kwan knows how to deliver guilty pleasures. He keeps the repartee nicely outrageous, the excess wretched and the details wickedly delectable. Who knew that an Asian menu might boast of “Giant South Sea Scallop Consommé With Washington State Ginseng Vapors and Black Mushrooms?” (“Go figure,” writes Mr. Kwan, in a footnote about why the ginseng is imported.) Who knew that an Asian socialite might include Save the Shahtoosh among her favored fashionable causes?
And who knew that a Far Eastern fashion disaster might be described in such novel terms. “Never, ever wear green chiffon,” Mr. Kwan has one character warn, “unless you want to look like bok choy” that’s been violently abused.
Kevin Kwan"s "Crazy Rich Asians" Depicts a Cult of Opulence
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