Review | Book review: China Rich Girlfriend - sequel to Crazy Rich Asians
Featuring a riot of Chinese conspicuous consumption that takes in Shanghai, Paris, Silicon Valley and Hong Kong, Kevin Kwan's second book is a perfect summer read
There is no better season for a Kevin Kwan novel than summer. When the Singaporean-born author's debut book, Crazy Rich Asians, debuted in June 2013, it wasn't long before its sparkly gold cover could be seen on beaches from St Barths to Nice to Malibu, and maybe even Hainan, held aloft by fashionable women in Gucci shades and Missoni bikinis.
And with good reason: Crazy Rich Asians gave readers access to a world that not only a few entered, but also few truly knew about - the world of old Asian money. We're talking about grande dames in cheongsams and tiaras who swanned around in family palaces (never mere mansions), tycoons who bought entire resorts on a whim, and young heiresses who basically kept the likes of Stella McCartney in business.
The sequel does start off with pathological name-dropping, over-the-top scenes of frenzied shopping and high-society bad behaviour that Crazy Rich Asians made its brand, but the story quickly deepens into a much more intricate, surprising and relevant narrative
The book was not only a takedown of the mindless consumerism of the snobs and arrivistes of the moneyed East. It was also a surround-sound celebration of Asia's material success, its rise in the global economy and its throbbing, growing power. Crazy Rich Asians announced to the literary world that Asians had fully arrived, toting their Vuitton trunks behind them (well, the servants toting the luggage). Kwan's tales of outrageous, inventive excess and social manoeuvring left everyone who cracked open its pages guffawing.
As soon as Crazy Rich Asians sashayed up The New York Times' bestsellers list, the author signed on to write the sequel, and many rabid jet-set fans all over the world panted for its arrival.
And so it is a great joy to say that China Rich Girlfriend does not disappoint - for the most part anyway. True, the sequel does start off with pathological name-dropping, over-the-top scenes of frenzied shopping and high-society bad behaviour that Crazy Rich Asians made its brand, but the story quickly deepens into a much more intricate, surprising and relevant narrative.
Kwan has shrewdly shifted the focus from Singapore to Shanghai, Hong Kong and even Silicon Valley, and what better way to explore the cutting edge of radically changing Asian social morés than to focus on its new epicentres of action? Many of Crazy Rich Asians' central characters are back: the strangely sensible but can't-touch-this rich Nicholas Young; his modestly raised Chinese-American fiancée, Rachel Chu; Nick's preternaturally chic cousin, Astrid Leong, and her déclassé problem husband, Michael; Nick's scheming high-society mother, Eleanor; and Kitty Pong, a former mainland Chinese porn star who has managed to marry a crazy rich Hongkonger and is plotting her ascent into Asian respectability.
Add to this colourful crew new personalities who represent China's nouveau super-rich, most notably Colette Bing, the daughter of China's third richest man, and Carlton Bao, a Shanghai princeling who bears an uncanny resemblance to Rachel. Cue the ominous music, as this is where the plot thickens.