"Midnight at the Dragon Cafe" by Judy Fong Bates

Image result for judy fong bates midnight at the dragon cafe reviewSet in the 1960s, Judy Fong Bates’s much-talked-about debut novel is the story of a young girl, the daughter of a small Ontario town’s solitary Chinese family, whose life is changed over the course of one summer when she learns the burden of secrets. Through Su-Jen’s eyes, the hard life behind the scenes at the Dragon Cafe unfolds.
As Su-Jen’s father works continually for a better future, her mother, a beautiful but embittered woman, settles uneasily into their new life. Su-Jen feels the weight of her mother’s unhappiness as Su-Jen’s life takes her outside the restaurant and far from the customs of the traditional past. When Su-Jen’s half-brother arrives, smouldering under the responsibilities he must bear as the dutiful Chinese son, he forms an alliance with Su-Jen’s mother, one that will have devastating consequences.
Written in spare, intimate prose, Midnight at the Dragon Cafe is a vivid portrait of a childhood divided by two cultures and touched by unfulfilled longings and unspoken secrets. 

Midnight at the Dragon Café is the much-talked-about debut novel telling the story of a young girl, the daughter of a small Ontario town's solitary Chinese family, whose life is changed over the course of one summer in the 1960s, when she learns the burden of secrets. Through Su-Jen's eyes, the hard life behind the scenes at the Dragon Café unfolds. As Su-Jen's father works continually for a better future, her mother, a beautiful but embittered woman, settles uneasily into their new life. Su-Jen feels the weight of her mother's unhappiness as Su-Jen's life takes her outside the restaurant and far from the customs of the traditional past. When Su-Jen's half-brother arrives, smouldering under the responsibilities he must bear as the dutiful Chinese son, he forms an alliance with Su-Jen's mother, one that will have devastating consequences.
Written in spare, intimate prose, Midnight at the Dragon Café is vivid portrait of a childhood divided by two cultures and touched by unfulfilled longings and unspoken secrets.
PRAISE FOR MIDNIGHT AT THE DRAGON CAFÉ
“In deceptively simple, intimate prose, Judy Fong Bates captures the complexities of a childhood filled with secrets, longing, and superstition, and powerfully exposes the lengths to which families will go to survive. Midnight at the Dragon Café is an original, haunting debut novel.”  — KIRKUS REVIEWS, starred review
“The mounting suspense of family secrets makes this first novel a breathless read, even as the simple, beautiful words make you want to stop and read the sentences over and over again.”  — BOOKLIST, starred review
“.. Bates writes in clean, understated prose, imbuing her characters with a lasting poignancy.”  — ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
“Judy Fong Bates catches and holds our attention like a teacher of unruly kids: She whispers…. Bates’s unpretentious prose keeps the potential melodrama in check.”  — THE WASHINGTON POST
“A fascinating and finely crafted work of fiction…. Compelling…. Absorbing and alluring….”  — WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
“Wonderfully written and acutely observed, Midnight at the Dragon Café is a haunting novel…. As skilled and original as it is moving.”  — THE LONDON FREE PRESS
“A unique and imaginative drama…. Bates’s writing is smooth and simple, but powerful.”  — THE CALGARY HERALD
“An elegant first novel.”  — CHATELAINE
“The simplicity and honesty of Fong Bates' composition... puts the readers right in the midst of 'Dragon Café'.”  — THE PLAIN DEALER, CLEVELAND
“[Bates’] attention to physical detail is matched by compassionate understanding, which gives real weight to the telling of the submerged, drowning passion hidden in this household.”  — NATIONAL POST
“Fong Bates has emerged with her first novel, a work that often reads like the best finely-crafted memoir.”  — THE GLOBE AND MAIL
“[Midnight at the Dragon Café] is a contribution to the multicultural awareness it records, an engaging addition to our rich literature of immigrants.”  — TORONTO STAR
“[Judy Fong Bates] has transmuted her experience into fiction that says something essential and makes wonderful reading.”  — THE VANCOUVER SUN
“A terrific page-turner of a first novel.”  — QUILL & QUIRE
“Judy Fong Bates has created a novel that does what the very best fiction can do — take us into a world we could not have otherwise entered; put us among people we could not otherwise know. As quintessentially Canadian as Alice Munro, and equally delightful to read.”  — SHYAM SELVADURAI
“A deeply affecting debut novel... Bates conveys with pathos and generosity the anger, disappointment, vulnerability and pride of people struggling to balance duty and passion.”  — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Translator Translated" by Anita Desai

Image
Prema Joshi is a “prematurely aged” instructor of English literature at a girls’ college, “a tired woman going home from work with nothing to look forward to, nothing to smile about,” who sees a way out of her malaise when she unexpectedly gets a chance to translate into English a set of short stories written in one of India’s many regional languages. The focus here is the hierarchy that separates writer and translator, with the latter clearly in an inferior position and frustrated by it, and what happens when a translator violates that order. But Ms. Desai also uses the novella for satiric purposes, perhaps to exact vengeance on some literary nationalists in India; at one point Prema and her publisher attend a conference where they are hectored by “a pudgy man in a sweat-stained suit,” who imperiously demands to know, “What made you decide to translate these stories into a colonial language that was responsible for destroying the original language?” ... "Translator Transla...
Read more

"House of Lies"

Image
As pitches go it can't have been an easy one: "So our new show, House of Lies, is about a bunch of cut-throat management consultants and the way in which they con corporate clients out of money each week. As the strapline has it: Meet the One Per Cent sticking it to the One Per Cent. Yes, that's right, it's a half-hour comedy about wealthy slicksters screening right in the middle of one of the biggest economic depressions America has experienced. Good joke, huh?" The answer is er, no, not really. House of Lies, which will air on Sky Atlantic later this year, has many things going for it: an outstanding cast, including the charismatic Don Cheadle as the company's fast-talking boss, Marty Kaan, a devious expert at the art of the soft-sell; some genuinely funny one-liners; slick cinematography and a willingness to take risks with the format (Marty often breaks the fourth wall to explain to the television audience what certain terminology means, or how his ...
Read more

"The World we Found" (by Thrity Umrigar)

Image
A crisis reconnects four young firebrands from college who have grown apart as adults, in a story dense with sensitive scrutiny. Straddling India and the United States, this tale of friends reunited in disparate maturity is heavy on internal reflection, lighter on events. The highpoint of Armaiti, Nishta, Laleh and Kavita’s student years in late-1970s’ Bombay was their involvement in political activity, in particular a demonstration that saw two of them arrested. Now, three decades later, Nishta, renamed Zoha, has spent years in an oppressive marriage to Iqbal, a Muslim who has grown very devout. Impulsive Laleh is comfortably settled with her influential husband Adish and children; architect Kavita has finally come to terms with her lesbianism; and, in America, Armaiti has just been diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor, a catastrophe that pulls the four together again at Armaiti’s request. Laleh and Kavita are free to leave India immediately but Nishta has to be found, persuaded...
Read more