It's 2008, and Charles Wang is watching his business empire collapse. Though his roots are Chinese, Charles was raised in Taiwan and grew up listening to tales of the great tracts of land owned by his family which were snatched away by the Communists. It was America that threw him a lifeline: arriving in the USA with nothing more than a list of urea dealers, he became the multi-millionaire owner of a cosmetics company. But now his family has lost everything, including their Bel Air mansion.
Charles has the onerous duty of telling his second wife, Barbra (his first wife was killed in a helicopter accident), and his children, Saina, Andrew and Grace, that they are now penniless. Sixteen-year-old fashion blogger Grace is unceremoniously whisked out of boarding school and aspiring stand-up comedian Andrew has to drop out of college to join their father and stepmother in a road trip across the continent. Their destination is a farmhouse in the Catskills owned by oldest daughter Saina, a conceptual artist, the only one who has money of her own and a place they can stay – although, as further details of Charles's creative accounting comes to light, she may soon not even have that.
Even so, Saina's house isn't Charles' final destination. He plans to lobby the Chinese government to return his ancestral lands to him. Come what may, Charles Wang will never accept defeat.
Jade Chang has a keen sense of humour, and The Wangs Vs The World is a lot funnier than it is tragic. Creating sympathetic characters with a believable family dynamic, she turns ethnic stereotypes on their heads and honestly explores how the thoroughly Americanised Wang siblings interact with a culture that still regards them as "other".
But the main focus of the book is humanising Charles. We can admire his drive and tenacity, but find little to like about him at first, especially after learning of his detached reaction to his first wife's death. However, adversity strips away his authority and turns him into just a dad, albeit a dad with dreams, taking his kids on a road trip. At one point, Grace has only to extend her hand for her father to meekly drop the car keys into it. At other times, he can assert his dominance with a single word. In other words, with their riches now gone, the Wangs are learning how to be a family.
The experience not only endows Charles Wang with greater warmth and humility, but also enhances his understanding, now that the American Dream has turned against him, of what he was actually buying into when he chose it. Jade Chang rounds off his story in a satisfying way, even if it's at the expense of the other characters, leaving some threads dangling. That aside, it's an entertaining and enjoyable novel with some very deft characterisation, as well as sly, well-placed critiques of American racial attitudes and slightly less subtle digs at the system that brought about the 2008 crash in the first place.
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