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We want to take the time, dear readers, to acknowledge that the month of May is Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month. In these times where domestic terrorist attacks against AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) people are occurring with such frequency, Heart.Wants.Books. wants to state that we celebrate the perspective and history that AAPI people bring to our country and the world. Had we not been planning and prepared for a different theme during May 2021, I am sure that an AAPI History/Heritage theme would have been in the works. Chances are high we will, either together or individually, read a book or two in May to celebrate AAPI Heritage Month and share those with you in our Reading Life Review. Now, back to our regularly scheduled review…

It is hopefully no secret that, sometimes, we should on each other.  We should take a shower, we should fuel our bodies well, we should read books by people who don’t look like us, we should read genres that aren’t romance.  May’s Virtual Book Club pick fits into a couple of those categories, and one more, it’s been on the TBR list for a bit, because sometimes the TBR list shoulds on us too (like when we want to read A Court of Mist and Fury again).  If you’re up for a reading adventure, join us Friday, May 7 at 7:30 p.m. CST to discuss Neil Gaiman’s  American Gods, but you do have to sign up here.  

Dear readers, Kevin Kwan’s Sex and Vanity has been on my TBR list since it was announced.  A readerly friend who read and recommended The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek read and raved about Crazy Rich Asians, so I knew I needed to jump into Kwan’s work, and a stand alone felt like a great place!  Did I know anything about this book aside from title, author, and trusted recommendation?  Nope, and I was good with that.  AND THEN, I heard it was a retelling of A Room with a View by E. M. Foster and I was HERE FOR IT!  Oh friends, I don’t usually keep secrets from Ashley, but this one I did!  It’s in the marketing copy, so she could have found it, but as she doesn’t appreciate Foster (or at least doesn’t appreciate A Passage to India), I wasn’t about to ruin this buddy read for myself or my buddy!  (And to be perfectly open, I adore A Room with a View, liked Howard’s End, and didn’t finish A Passage to India before my library loan ran out, years ago, so…I don’t appreciate it as much by far.)  

I have to admit, I struggled to get into Sex and Vanity at first (but I finished it in four days, so about usual for me).  The action opens with Lucie and Charlotte arriving on Capri for nearly a week of lavish wedding festivities.  I wanted the Italian pieces to be more like Our Italian Summer by Jennifer Probst, but they were definitely more Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.  That was my issue – the sheer excess of all of the festivities, with each day’s outdoing the last.  

Leaving aside the excesses of the characters (which does happen, relatively, quickly in the text), Sex and Vanity was a joy to read, and I’m really glad I knew it was a retelling going in.  Honestly, reading this made me wonder if A Room with a View is a loose Pride and Prejudice reimaging.  They’re both enemies to lovers romance stories with a double side of societal commentary, and then each goes about its own path.  Whether or not Forster was inspired in some way by Austen, I really appreciated the additions to the A Room with a View retelling that a 2020 lens (pun intended) added to it with Lucie working to find her place as the daughter of an American born Chinese mother and an old money father.  Not only did Lucie have to overcome her prejudice against George (and his mother, Rosemary), but she also had to come to grips with who she is, just as her mother has to acknowledge the family and parenting choices she made about connecting with different sides of the family after Lucie’s dad passed away when she was young.  

My favorite part of Sex and Vanity is not the romance or the setting, but all the other familial pieces that come into play outside of our main romance story line.  Lucie and her brother become closer as they reveal parts of their mutual lived experience that landed differently with each of them.  We get to spend time with Lucie’s mom and see her, Rosemary, and Charlotte become more complex supporting characters.  And we get to know Auden, who I would LOVE to know in person (although I do not support the practice of puppy yoga as it does not work out at my house).  I don’t know that I’ll reread Sex and Vanity, but I give it an enthusiastic four stars, and I’m even more interested in Kwan’s backlist than before!  

What’s your favorite retelling?  

~Nikki 

In 2014, the year after his debut novel Crazy Rich Asians was published, author Kevin Kwan was named as one of “Five Writers to Watch” by The Hollywood Reporter and in 2018 was named to Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World”  – the year of the film release based on the book. (I love that romantic comedy even though I’ve only watched the movie and not read the book, I know, I know.) Crazy Rich Asians has been translated into over 30 languages and has two sequels, China Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems. For multiple weeks in 2018, the books of the trilogy held the top three spots on The New York Times bestseller list, an almost unprecedented feat. Sex and Vanity is his fourth novel and was published in June of 2020.  Kwan was born in Singapore, but his family emigrated to Texas when he was 11 years old. He earned his BA in Media Studies from University of Houston-Clear Lake and his BFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design in Manhattan. 

I really appreciate this quote from Jon M. Chu, director of Crazy Rich Asians: “I think Kevin’s work has such a biting wit to it. It’s a commentary on wealth, on class, on human beings and our greedy nature, and he does it with such sugary delight. You really get a sense of this world that readers have never been to—that I haven’t been to—and he has fun with it. It’s very entertaining; it’s not just cerebral.” And that is what every page of Sex and Vanity is filled with, entertainment by the almost scathing social commentary against the monied class. I’ll be the first one to admit my bougie tastes have gotten me into trouble a time or two, but that’s because I don’t come from money and certainly haven’t earned and saved up enough in my working years to justify the price point of my desires. Pottery Barn taste on a Target budget, am I right?!

But, that’s what Kwan does SO WELL here. The character of Lucie Churchill just felt like me, but with way more dollar signs. And when I say ME, I meant the humanity of emotions, not physically, financially, or by personal experience. Kwan knows what and how the Manhattan social structure works because he has been a part of it, a self-admitted outsider that “was never a threat” but still vacationing to the Hamptons and even Capri, even though he now spends most of his time in L.A. rather than Manhattan. The hardest hang of the entire novel was the overt yet barely discussed racism against Lucie, her brother, and mother, by her father’s side of the family and then everyone else in their social circle, even the Asians. There’s one of the final scenes in the novel where she finally explains to her cousin Charlotte all of the ways she had been made to feel less than her entire life. I’m going to leave it up to you to read how the scene ends, but it really helped me to love Lucie even more.

And you know what else I love more? Finding out that Sex and Vanity is the first in another trilogy, (and surprising Nikki with this information when she goes to edit my -ish) a series of books where each book is an homage to international cities that Kwan loves the next two being London and Paris. And I am SO HERE FOR THEM since this 4.5 star read is rounded up to 5 on my judgement chart. 

~Ashley

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