[.ca] Free Food for Millionaires (ISBN 0446699853)

Sexual and Material Temptations Will Lead You and Others Astray:
I was drawn by the book's title: What could such a book be about? I was surprised by the message in mostly good ways. Ms. Lee has succeeded in creating a new way of looking at the immigrant experience, and her novel will cause you to rethink many assumptions you have made about others. You'll also have a more jaundiced view of where American society is headed: a warning call about the dangers of heedless ambition, greed, and sexual immorality that many will agree is needed. The traditional American immigrant novel usually followed this plot: Poor people barely make it to America, work hard, sacrifice, send their children to school; the children succeed; and the family prospers while adhering to good values. The contrast between the wider world the children experience and what the parents perceive usually makes for some interesting reading. Readers enter the Han family at a defining moment of the immigrant success path: The older daughter, Casey, has just graduated from Princeton where she did well. Where we expect success and happiness from the story to follow, failure lurks. Casey doesn't plan to go on to graduate school, even though she was admitted to Columbia Law School. She only applied for one permanent job and didn't get it. But she can always continue to sell hats for peanuts in the upscale department store where she's worked part-time for years. What's the problem? "As a capable young woman, Casey Han felt compelled to choose respectability and success. But it was glamour and insight that she craved." While earning this success, Casey found the frivolous life that her fellow students lived called out eloquently to her. But those are rich people, and she is not. Her Korean parents work at a Manhattan dry cleaner from which they never take a day off. What's the right path for someone like Casey? Naturally, her father wants to get Casey on a stable path. Casey doesn't want to submit, and she's told to leave after a violent confrontation. No problem. She'll just take her cigarettes and live with her wealthy boy friend. Uh, oh! He's been picked up by two college girls looking for a fling, and Casey walks in on the threesome. Now, what will she do? The story plays out over the next four years as Casey tries out life on her own terms. Grudgingly, she realizes that as a woman without means she will have to be supported financially by someone. She is disappointed to find that few people want to help without any strings attached. While she has always sought acceptance in the nonKorean world, she's happily surprised to find that Koreans (even ones she doesn't like) can be her best supporters. How will she earn a living? What she's good at doing can earn her a high income . . . but she doesn't like it. What she likes to do doesn't pay well at all. What to choose? In the meantime, she pretends to be wealthy and spends lavishly on clothes she can't afford. Her debts mount up . . . as does her sense of futility. The novel's main point is that no one can be trusted when it comes to sexual and material temptations, including yourself. Where should you go from that pessimistic view of our sinful nature? Ms. Lee's plot suggests that faith in your religion isn't enough to protect you. Those without religion, however, have worse lapses than the religious. The book's end will leave you with a sense that you need to listen more carefully to the individual's cry: Do your own thing. But you knew that already. What will intrigue you about this book is to realize how much pain you can cause yourself by resisting what comes naturally. One of my favorite scenes in the book has a very hungry Casey interviewing for a support job at an investment bank. She wants to pretend she has no needs and eats almost nothing at a buffet of free food while many millionaire brokers gorge themselves. Casey can't compromise with her self-image, even if the self-image isn't based in reality. Unlike many novels that either don't develop the characters or only develop them once, Ms. Lee develops many of her characters along multiple dimensions through the temptations and adversity they face. That makes for a more compelling read. But it also presents a problem for readers: You need to want to go through all of that development. For me, I would have been satisfied with 200 pages less. Although the book never totally bogged down, it doesn't have the zing of a book that focuses just on the key turning points of the story. I'm also not sure the story started in the right place. Casey didn't ever make sense to me. Perhaps if there had been 25 pages in the beginning about her life at Princeton I would have understood her conflicted character better. For example, she's a spendthrift, but she doesn't start to act that way until after she graduates. A real spendthrift would have had a credit card earlier and run up the retail debt sooner. Someone who was totally committed to high living would have been interviewing at every high paying employer who came to Princeton. Someone who wanted a year off to make up her mind would have applied for a traveling fellowship that paid all of her expenses. Perhaps Ms. Lee intended to portray Casey as depressed, but surely Casey would have made it to the school infirmary and gotten medicine for that? Those who like serious literature will be thrilled by the layering of themes and references that a less skilled writer would have left out. But you'll have to deal with the extended length to gain that pleasure. Casey wouldn't have bothered. She would have reread a favorite book instead.