Real Americans: A novel
Apr 2024 ¡ Sold by Knopf
3.0star
1 review
Ebook
416
Pages
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About this ebook
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠READ WITH JENNAâS MAY BOOK CLUB PICK ⢠From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures?Â
"Mesmerizing"âBrit Bennett ⢠"A page turner.ââHa Jin ⢠âGorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft"âAndrew Sean Greer ⢠"Traverses time with verve and feeling."âRaven Leilani
Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Maoâs Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.
In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers.
In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritanceâa story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.
Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks:Â Are we destined, or made? And if we are made, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?
"Mesmerizing"âBrit Bennett ⢠"A page turner.ââHa Jin ⢠âGorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft"âAndrew Sean Greer ⢠"Traverses time with verve and feeling."âRaven Leilani
Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Maoâs Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.
In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers.
In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritanceâa story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.
Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks:Â Are we destined, or made? And if we are made, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?
Ratings and reviews
3.0
1 review
Peter McCorry
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May 9, 2024
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About the author
RACHEL KHONG is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR; O, The Oprah Magazine; Vogue; and Esquire. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Cut, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and Tin House. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Franciscoâs Mission District. She lives in California.
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