White Ivy: A Novel

This is one of those novels when you know that the ending is not going to be a HEA – happily ever after. There is too much angst and foreign complications. Ivy Lin, our main character, is born in China and initially raised by her grandmother, Meifeng, who, although loving, taught her to steal. Her parents, Nan and Shen, have gone to America to create a better life and finally save enough money to bring Ivy to Massachusetts. Ivy, now reunited with her parents, who she hardly knows, has a brother, Austin. No one really tells Ivy what’s really happening. Her grandmother, on a few occasions, tells Ivy about her Nan’s sad life to defend her daughter after a mean argument.Nan is not likeable. She is an overbearing, strict Asian mother who constantly erodes her daughter’s confidence and threatens she will end up alone and starving unless she works and behaves the way she orders. Beset with financial problems, there is a stream of fighting for some financial security. Ivy does not agree with her parents’ view of almost everything. However, Ivy has a few things going for her; she is pretty with beautiful eyes and is smart.Ivy reconnects with a grade school crush, Gideon Steyer, a preppy, nice guy from a wealthy family. She works hard to create a relationship with Gideon and keep up with his friends. Ivy is a teacher, with little money and debts, but she spends $575 on a plane ticket to join Gideon and newly engaged friends on a skiing trip. It is an awkward vacation, albeit Ivy does not know how to ski and she is awkward, but her plight is to win Gideon’s love. She continues to straddle her opportunism and her cover-up with a submissive and lovable nature. She is striving to climb into the American middle-class or beyond. I thought that was the theme of this debut novel, but it is more than that. There are some shocking revelations and a deep study into bizarre violence.The book becomes a dark novel, but in a good way. Desperation can produce drastic actions. Susie Yang went beyond and avoided clichés of privilege and class – the American way.

White Ivy by @susieyyang is a classic coming of age in an immigrant family story. We catch up with Ivy, who recently moved from China to Boston, and was taught at a young age to shoplift and steal but her grandmother. Her father gets a good job at an elite prep school and Ivy gets to there. But she has a very difficult time fitting in. This is the basic theme of the book. Ivy’s always the one on the outside.In grade school, Ivy develops a crush on Gideon, a blond hunk whose father is a senator. She sneaks around to see him more and everntually her parents catch her. Her parents send her to her cousin’s in China and when she is away, they move the family to NJ. Ivy moves to Boston for college and stays there when she runs into Gideon’s sister and finagles her way into a party where she connects with Gideon again. The story follows the rest of Ivy’s life and her relationship with Gideon.The book starts a little slow, but I found the look into Chinese American culture fascinating. The different ways they parents their daughter and their son were really compelling to me. I found the meeting of Gideon’s parents and Ivy’s parents to be one of the highlights of the book.The genre of this character driven novel has been a little incorrectly categorized as a thriller and I would disagree. I would call this more contemporary fiction or even women’s fiction. The twist at the end sort of puts it in the thriller area, but wouldn’t call this a thriller.

While every reviewer has an obligation to be as objective as possible, it is sometimes difficult to know if a criticism is valid or if the author is simply not the target audience for this particular book. Which is precisely why I do not review many of the books I read. I feel a sincere obligation to the author and the potential reader to only offer reviews of books I was intended to read.This book is classified on Amazon under the Asian American Literature genre. It is a genre I truly enjoy and often read, being an American who has lived in China for 11 years and is married to a Chinese woman who comes from very modest beginnings not dissimilar to those of Ivy Lin.The introduction on Amazon says that the story of Ivy Lin offers “stark insights into the immigrant experience…” And the book’s reading group guide describes it as “A coming of age story, a love triangle, an exploration of class and race and identity.” My kind of book, I thought.In the end, however, I believe this is an immigrant’s story in only the most technical sense. It is, rather, the story of a woman born in China with a very Western worldview (How it was acquired is not clear.) that follows her family to the US in search of wealth and the respectability and the happiness she believes it will provide her.While the Chinese seek wealth and respectability as well, however, Ivy’s definitions seem to come directly from the Boston Brahmin/ WASP handbook, showcased in the extreme by the New England family she wants to marry into. The Chinese define wealth and respectiblity very differently and pursue them for very different reasons. (Less material obsession, more familial piety.)Little of the book actually takes place in China, moreover, and you will learn little about Chinese culture compared to what you’ll find in books by Pearl S. Buck or Lisa See.Asian immigrants are often referred to as model immigrants but the reason for that is not just that they are hardworking and generally respectful but that they don’t define immigration in the same way most Americans do. Although I have lived and worked in China for a fairly long time, no Chinese, including my wife, thinks of me as an immigrant. In China you are either Chinese or you are a foreigner and the latter can never become the former, although I have never felt any sense of pejorative judgment about my status. I am just a foreigner. If you speak the language flawlessly you are merely a foreigner who speaks Chinese. If you have lived here a very long time, you are merely a foreigner who has lived here a long time.While I believe few things in life are binary, I do believe that the primary differences between Chinese culture and Western culture can be explained by worldview. The Chinese worldview is very inductive. Things are simply what they are. “The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white.” (The proverb that the author opens the book with.) Which is why traditional Chinese culture is full of superstition and mythology and there is an open acceptance of luck or the lack thereof.Western culture, on the other hand, is built on a more deductive foundation. We are slaves to cause and effect, to rules, and personal merit is a near-religion, which is why we put such value on the things we own and why most billionaires strive to be even richer. (It is a sign of merit, not luck.)Ivy was deductive from the moment she landed on American shores. She is always trying to understand, to scheme, to get ahead, but in the Western, not the Eastern sense. She is a thief, in other words, at many levels, as the first line of the book introduces her.The writing is professional. And the character development is complete, but largely two-dimensional. We can visualize the characters but we don’t ever really come to know them. They are very much like the pieces on a chessboard. They have purpose, but no essence. As the author notes, “All women, Ivy was beginning to understand, had a theme.” Don’t we all. But does our theme truly define us or is it just the costume we wear?Many of the female characters, including Ivy, use meaningless and frequent sex to create their themes, although it’s tame and not graphic. Still, I thought the tool was over-used and after the first third of the book thought is was more of a teenage romance novel and almost put it down. Ultimately, however, I realized that this is a novel about themes, not romance. Romantic, Ivy is not, so I began to see her promiscuity in a different light.In the end, I have to conclude, I was not the target audience for this book. But if you think you are you should read some of the other reviews.

There were so many unexpected twists and turns. The characters are unique and complicated. This story is definitely not a light read but a page turner for sure .

This is one of those rare jewels of a novel, immaculately constructed and with a narrative voice whose authenticity is starkly juxtaposed with the choices that everyone else wants for her.Left behind in China with her grandmother whilst her parents went to the promised land, America, Ivy straddles two very different continents and grows up learning to juggle her sense of fulfilment from both. She has the American Dream thrown at her from every corner and longs for nothing more than acceptance by her peers who remain distrustful and wary of her-she is unaware that they have her held up to them as a model of how to obey their parents which doesn't help Ivy at all.So she learns to take, to steal, almost as if she is stealing the personality and future that she wishes for herself versus her parents' expectations of greatness for her. There is a disconnect between punishment and praise, they punish her for not being the child that they raised because her formative years were moulded by her grandmother in China. Conversely, Ivy has no idea of just what her parents are going through to make ends meet and achieve what they think is the dream-successful children, house ownership and monetary status all predicated by hard work ethics.The only person who she has some common ground with is Polish immigrant, Roux, who could 'pass' for American but chooses not to, he wears his outsider badge like a visible red flag for anyone expecting him to adopt another country's morals and expectations-''Wear the right clothes,get a haircut,smile at a few girls and bam -transformation. It would be so easy for him to disguise himself as any all-American boy,and yet he made no effort to do so , whereas she,who took such pains with her clothes and her ma nerisms,would always have yellow skin and black hair and a squat nose,her exterior self hiding the truth that she was American! American! American!-the injustice of it stung deeply''.It is such an eye opener of a novel, listening to Ivy's voice and her frustrations at her life really makes you stop and think about what is held up be a gold standard for us to aim for, and yet, when you achieve that, there is always someone there waiting to 'pull you down a peg or two to remind you where you came from'.It is such a strange double standard and you look for the commonality as you reflect on what your parents and society has lined up for you, how do you break out of that box which you are born and raised in?Emblems of success for Ivy are her Chinese cousin to whom she is sent as punishment for a social infraction. It turns out to be a life changing experience that sends her home with yet another change-in her absence, her parents have moved house again. All her hard won progress in her looks, deportment and confidence are lost as the people she aimed to impress, the golden haired boy at her school, Gideon, is no longer accessible to her. And yet, she had a glimpse of another life in Sunrin's house, being treated almost as royalty would be because she is recognised as American.Her howl of rage rises visibly from the page, she has been the implement of her parent's ambitions her entire life and , taking off and leaving to create her own life is her revenge. Gideon remains her golden fleece, she feels that she will make it if she has an equivalent partner, but never expects that life will throw up surprises in the most unexpected ways...This is such a clever book, it has so much to say about the immigrant experience versus the American way of life when there actually quite a few points of commonality between them, mainly, the notion that if you work hard enough you can get anywhere in life. Ivy's voice is so strongly her own, and unique, and yet she does not recognise her value, feeling she is stranded between two very different types of life-''Wasn't her mother proof that you first love wasn't frivolous and fleeting,and that the loss of it could destroy you,leaving behind a bitter husk of a woman who resented her  husband and children because they were not the family she was supposed to have?''The sadness underlying this is that in her efforts to behave in the exact opposite of her mother and grandmother, by identifying and running from all the things held up to her as valuable, she is at a huge risk of recreating her female relative's 'mistakes'. Sometimes, if you push a child too hard they don't just run in the opposite direction, their determination not to become 'like that' has them completing a full circle.The plant, Ivy, is described as stubborn and self-supporting, it grows rapidly and can cause structural damage to foundations and I cannot imagine a more perfect name for this narrative voice. Her object of desire, Gideon, has Biblical connotations as he is seen as a hero who led his people against Israeli oppressors, and that also fits with Gideon being seen as the culmination of Ivy's goals. But, just a life throws Gideon back into Ivy's life, another spectre from her past also re-appears to shake the foundations of her new life. And this one won't be easily shaken off.There is also so much to be said about the way mainstream cultures regard and treat the 'outsiders', consider the most recent 'not in our back yard' argument about the Afghan refugees from a problem created by , and maintained  by the West. The responsibility of each human to see each other as a human being with dreams, influences and hopes for better has never been more necessary yet in such short supply.A novel which is as deeply affecting and poignant as 'White Ivy' does not come along very often so I would urge readers who might come across a copy to pick it up, listen to Ivy's voice, and let her tell her tale...

Character development well done with a very depressing story. Highlights the difficulties with integrating different cultures.

Terrible, honestly. I thought it was totally another book, the ending is terrible, the main character is unbearable, at some point I rooted against her

I am still reading White Ivy! It’s a pretty good easy read!!