Crazy Rich Asians

      "Every family is a crazy family."
                                                  -Kevin Kwan, author of  Crazy Rich Asians

      Did you ever read one of those books that's so good, that you just can't put down, that you're zipping through, that when you're halfway through you get a feeling of sadness and loss knowing that this book is going to come to an end, and so you slow start slowing down your reading so that it will last longer?

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan is one of those books.

        I happened across the book recently while roving through the stacks at Barnes & Noble, and as the cover looked intriguing I took it from the shelf to browse through a few pages.   After laughing my way through the first chapter I smacked the book shut and hurried to the checkout so I could buy it,  get it home, and dive into it,

...which I did.

      Crazy Rich Asians is a comedy of manners - and errors - about the super-, hyper-, megatomic-rich Chinese families of Singapore, the wealthiest and most prosperous city on the planet.   The characters in the story wear top-of-the line designer couture which they buy by the boat-load from Paris, they eat the finest food prepared by their gourmet cooks as well as from the city's legendary food stalls, they go to the best schools, zip around in their private planes from the palaces in which they live to the most beautiful and amazing places in the world.  Meanwhile they jockey for status, prestige and good marriages for their children in the gossip-, snobbery-, and money-saturated shark-tank of their high-brow, high-drama society.  From the lavish parties to a $40 million dollar wedding, every scene in the book is over-the-top.  And hilarious.

     The trouble in the too-affluent paradise of the characters in Crazy  Rich Asians begins when Nick, a young NYU college professor who is in fact the heir to the fortune of a Singapore family that is "richer than God", decides to bring  his Chinese-American girlfriend Rachel home to meet his family.   Rachel, a professor of Economics, has no idea that her boyfriend is a billionaire-in-waiting, nor is she prepared for the opulence - and back-stabbery - of the world Nick whisks her into.  Rachel arrives in Singapore unaware of the panic that the news of her existence has caused not only within Nick's family, who had plans for him to make a good match from a rich family, but among the other families of the Singaporean Chinese elite who had plans for one of their daughters to land the scion of Asia's plummest dynasty.

     Kevin Kwan, himself a child of the richest of the Singapore rich, describes everything in the most minute detail.  He has an eye for and and an encyclopedic knowledge of high fashion, jewelry, interior design and architecture, gourmet food, travel destinations, and the lifestyle - and troubles - of the wretchedly, excessively, oppressively wealthy.  There's a character in the book, a gossipy but sympathetic and world-wise fashionista named Oliver who sees and knows all in the world of Asian high society.  I'm taking a guess that the author might have fashioned this character a little bit after himself.

       In an interview with Vanity Fair Kwan said of the wedding scene in his novel:
      "I’ve seen weddings even more over-the-top than this. So many aspects of and stories in the book I actually had to tone down! The reality is simply unbelievable. They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, but there’s such a thing as believability when you’re writing a novel. I did a lot more simplifying and cutting out of the decadence and the excess than I did of adding it on, if you can believe that."
     He then added:
    "Sometimes I had to actually take details out, because my editor was like, No one will believe this. And I would say, But this really happened, and she’d reply, It doesn’t matter. You’re going to lose readers because it’s going to seem so unreal that people would spend this much money, or do something this excessive. So those parts were changed."

     Crazy Rich Asians is good on so many levels.  It's funny, yet it's got heart, and at times your own will feel wrenched.  And it's fun reading all the delicious details.  One comes away wishing to be able to visit Singapore, this version of Singapore, to see the people and their clothes and their manses, to visit their paradise hideaways, to taste the food they eat.
     But alas, (sigh) that sort of thing is not for the likes of you and me, however rich we may be in our own world.  The book is occasionally peppered with the characters' down-the-nose comments about the over-all shoddiness and hoi-polloity of America and all people and things American.
     But if we can't actually taste the world of Crazy Rich Asians, we can at least savor it vicariously in Kevin Kwan's book, laughing all the way.

      So if you haven't already read it, go read Crazy Rich Asians.
      And - oh, happy day - you won't have to feel sad half way though!  It turns out that Kevin Kwan has written a sequel

called China Rich Girlfriend.

   I'm on my way to Barnes & Nobel!

Reference:
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/06/crazy-rich-asians-kevin-kwan-asia-upper-crust