I picked this up because I thought it would be interesting take on the Asian American immigrant experience and liked the fact that it was centered around a restaurant. This book was not what I thought and I almost put aside for other things but I'm glad I stuck with it. The book was well written and the characters and their world are interwoven together quite well. I didn't find any of them particularly likable (this seems to be a theme in books I've read recently) and that made the book less enjoyable for me. I also felt as though the characters lacked depth and development. Without giving spoilers, I will say that this book left me feeling unsatisfied and a little unsettled at the end. I'm on the fence if I would recommend this or reread it but there is something about it that has stuck with me. For that, I'll give it 3 stars.

Enjoyable read; engaging, flawed characters and well-written.

'Uncle Pang was always picking something apart.'

Uncle Pang is more than picking everything apart, he is the master controlling his puppets. Between the workers and the owners, the real action takes place behind the scenes, not with the patrons. Jimmy Han doesn’t want to work under his deceased father’s shadow anymore, he longs for an edgier more modern restaurant and no one is going to stop him. Certainly not his overbearing old mother, nor his do-gooder older brother Johnny. When he isn’t ordering his workers around, he is making plans, big plans for his future restaurant. Nan and Ah-Jack (my favorite characters) are both buckling under the demands of their loved ones. For Nan, it’s her wayward son Pat, “Nan wanted to believe that at Pat’s core, all his gentle selves were curled up, waiting to be awoken.” It’s too hard for her to admit just how much he has soured. Ah-Jack’s wife Michelle is sick with cancer, and he’s getting too old to be as strong for her as he once was. There is something that has always been special, that’s simmered between he and the much younger Nan. She brings out the poetry of his tongue, the youth of his old heart. The love Nan has for Ah-Jack ‘came slowly, as weaknesses in the body often do.” But how does he feel, anchored to his dying wife, whom he’s been tied to since his childhood? Annie is the privileged niece, working in the family business, enticed by bad boy Pat- but just how far will she go for a little excitement?

Uncle Pang is like a dark cloud that descends on them all, picking and chosing who to ‘use’ and who to ‘discard’. Pat and Annie get caught up in a game too big for themselves, and it will cost more than young love. It’s a story not just about the successful Chinese immigrants, but those who struggle to make their way to a better life for themselves and their children. It’s the complications of family, brothers locked in their roles one as ‘trouble’ the other, as reluctant ‘savior.’ It’s a matriarch that refuses to give up control to her foolish sons, and love that is never too late. It’s thinking that what you dream of is better for you than what you have and that sometimes we idealize something so much that once we attain it, we find we may not want it at all.

I enjoyed the humor, even the selfishness and greed but most of all I adored the relationship between Nan and Ah-Jack (the old fool by far the best character). Everyone seems to be either manipulating each other, fooling themselves, or saving one another. A story of beginnings and endings, of many relationships that simmer beneath the roof of a Chinese Restaurant, that is for some a home and for others a weight around their neck.

Publication Date: June 19, 2018

Henry Holt & Company

Thanks to Henry Holt & Co and Net Galley for a digital copy of Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li.
#NumberOneChineseRestaurant #NetGalley

Number One Chinese Restaurant revolves around the Beijing Duck House, which has been a Rockville MD hot spot for decades. Jimmy and Johnny are struggling to keep the restaurant and their personal lives up to the standards of their late father. Add in a domineering mother, backstabbing staff and a mysteriously criminal 'uncle', and it's a recipe for dysfunction.

From beginning to end, this book was confusing to me, full of unappealing characters and unexplained conflicts. They treated each other so poorly I couldn't believe they would remain in each other's lives. The dialogue was interrupted by unclear ramblings and flashbacks which left me even more confused. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy this novel, but it did make me hungry for Chinese food.

Author Lillian Li didn’t give me what I wanted in her book, “Number One Chinese Restaurant.” I expected to walk in the narrow streets of Chinatown with the bumping and shuffling crowd peering curiously into crowded windows, the smell of frying pork and boiling noodles stirring unseen hungers, groups of young boys in oversized T-shirts and faded jeans, smoking and eyeballing the girls, long strings of brown smoked ducks hanging over teeming produce stands, mysterious narrow doorways leading to stairways that looked dark and intriguing. But missing for me was an authentic atmosphere that said you are here inside the number one Chinese restaurant and this is how it really feels.

There was Chinese food, of course, mostly duck. There was an inside look at the complexity of Chinese families. There were descriptions of Chinese restaurants with the bustle of employees carrying trays of steaming dishes. There were smokers huddled and taking a break in alleys. There were fires that changed the face and operations of the restaurants. There was envy and jealousy between management, the front-end workers, and the kitchen help. As real as Li presented it, at a deeper level I still felt excluded

I’m not blaming the author for my lack of perception. Every critic I read with what appeared to be a Chinese name gave high praise to Li’s authentic depiction. So I can’t fault the writer. I blame my lack of understanding of what a real Chinese restaurant is because I based my perception on the one Chinese restaurant I know anything about; the one in my hometown that I have patronized all my life. The atmosphere and the family that have run it for over 100 years do not resemble the circumstances in this book.

Based on what I know and have experienced doesn’t square with my reading of the novel. I don’t know why, because the author had skill and good intentions. I’ve often complained about books that don’t give me a physical sense of what’s happening. I think that’s the case here.

Regardless of whether it’s true, they say the sidewalks of America are paved with gold. It’s the best story and as Lillian Li writes, “In a world without fairness, the best stories rose to the top.”

Li’s debut novel “Number One Chinese Restaurant” is about the best story: the American dream — a hard-working Chinese family who opens a successful D.C.-based Chinese restaurant, makes The Washington Post, buys a mansion.

The Han family’s American dream is paved with gold, but beneath those gilded surfaces are fathers who died from cancer without his children by his side because they were instructed to keep the restaurant open during the holidays. It’s about parents who took their children to movies at theaters and slept through them because they were so tired from working all the time. It’s about the abandoned mansions that never felt like home because the family spent all their waking hours working at the restaurant. It’s about mothers who fished dumplings out of the trash and ate them to show their children to never waste food. It’s about children begrudgingly working in their family’s restaurant while growing up (“Every day at a Chinese restaurant was bring – your – kid – to -work day,” jokes one of the characters), embarrassed by their relatives’ poor English, mannerisms or jobs.

In that way, the family’s restaurant becomes both a dream and a curse — the thing that prevented them from becoming a “normal” American family who went on scheduled family vacations, sat for family dinners at dinner hours and talked about anything other than work.

Chinese parents toiled at the restaurant for the sake of their ungrateful children, who saw the restaurant as the “monument to his father’s greed” and wished their family had a “job with a larger purpose than filling a bank account.” Parents worked to build their children’s futures, telling Chinese parables their children didn’t understand.

Li tells her own parable with “Number One Chinese Restaurant” — that of Han brothers Johnny and Jimmy years after their father, Duck House’s founder Bobby Han, died from stomach cancer. The Han siblings keep the Duck House running between the two of them, but Jimmy’s ambition is to start his own restaurant — a Chinese fusion place separate from the one his father started.

This is costly, Jimmy learns, and to build his own Chinese American dream, he has to set his father’s on fire.

“Number One Chinese Restaurant” isn’t the best place you’ve ever eaten. The food is cooked with too much oil and MSG. But Li cooks with a lot of heart, using ingredients you don’t always see. Your stomach feels full after this meal even as your heart yearns more more.

Disclaimer: I received a free ebook of “Number One Chinese Restaurant” by Lillian Li from NetGalley in exchange for a honest review.

I received an ARC from NetGalley. I had a rough start with this book. It was difficult for me to get started with it. I kept on, and I'm really happy that I did. Once I got to know each superbly done character it was effortless. The story unfolded and carried me right along. A family story, but with elements of greasy underworld, favors and payoffs... It almost reminded me of Goodfellas, only with Chinese food. LOL I really enjoyed it!

Ms Li is obviously an accomplished and talented writer. But as lovely as the descriptions of the restaurant, the food, the clothes, atmosphere all were, there was not a likable character in the bunch.

From self-indulgent recovering addict Jimmy, to wimpy, kow-tows to everyone Nan, to her impudent angry son Pat, to her wish-washy long-time love Ah-Jack, and more. There was not a single person I wanted to root for in this book.

The story, the interactions between characters, the anguish and thrill and sorrow when the character speak their innermost thoughts, all were beautifully composed.

BUT, I just could not get over my intense dislike of every single person in the book. Honestly, I just didn't care for any of them. I wanted them to grow a spine, grow up, get a life, man up, stand up for themselves, do the right thing and let right overcome wrong. Sigh.

I would love to be able to recommend this book but I just can't. I just can't.

The Han family has owned The Duck House for decades. Now, Jimmy Han has his sights set on a fancier place, his own place. But it won't be easy.

Relationships between generations, friends and family, whether hateful or loving, but steeped in loyalty are at the heart of this dark and sometimes funny book.

This book is amazing. I fell in love with the characters, even the “unlikeable” ones. Heartbreaking and warming all in one.

The more things change the more they stay the same. Unhappy with his father's restaurant he tries to start his own. A lot of interpersonal relationships among several characters keeps this story moving from a few different points of view over a rather short period of time. It was an okay read.

This was a bit of an odd story, which can be great, but in this case fella little flat for me. I found the characters to be a bit trying and almost abandoned the book at one point, though I am glad I ultimately finished it. It's not bad at all, just not really for me.

Agitated. That’s how I felt reading Number One Chinese Restaurant. I felt agitated and unsettled throughout the entire book. The characters agitated me on almost every page, as they argued with and annoyed each other on a constant basis.

This is the story of a Chinese family, the Hans, and the restaurant dynasty they’ve struggled to maintain for several decades. Alongside the Hans are their employees, friends, and business acquaintances, some of whom they’ve known since childhood.

Jimmy Han, the younger son of the deceased restaurant founder, manages the day to day operations of the business. He is on the floor, barking orders, sometimes cooking, often yelling insults to those around him. He has plans of opening a second restaurant, the Beijing Glory – a more lavish, upscale version of what he considers his late father’s old-fashioned and outdated establishment, the Duck House. Jimmy’s dream causes him to plan a desperate act with the help of an old family acquaintance, a godfather-like “fixer.” Although he decides better of his idea, wheels are already set in motion, and the plan takes off without him, involving his niece and the teenage son of one of his loyal employees.

The characters in the novel are tied intricately together through years and familial bonds, yet no one seems to like each other. Each character is pitted against the next in a never-ending swirl of insults, dislike and distrust – brother to brother, parent to child, lover to lover, spouse to spouse. I found this exhausting and couldn’t bring myself to like even one character in the story. Their incessant anger, disillusionment, and disappointment in life was ultimately so depressing that I couldn’t wait for the story to end. I persevered, however, as I really wanted to know how everything played out in the end.

The book itself was well-written, although I was consistently taken aback by the author switching perspectives and settings without warning in the middle of a chapter. I finally got used to this, although it was another reason to feel unsettled throughout the book. Maybe that was the author’s intent. If so, it worked. More agitation.

A 3 star rating, and this only because I did have enough interest in the storyline to follow it through to the end.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt and Co. for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book immediately draws the reader into a web of relationships that fascinates. The prose is descriptive, the plot moves at a great pace and the ending is intriguing. Excellent reading experience.

Some books just aren’t your style. This was one of those for me. It was well written and the story was interesting but I didn’t feel invested in the characters. It was like they had no soul. The Duck House was owned by the Han family. Jimmy and Johnny’s father had owned it until his death and now the sons are doing their best to run it into the ground. You meet the “boys” (their grown men) eccentric mother and several of the employees from the restaurant. These employees, after working together for many years, have formed their own “work family”. This family knows each other’s strengths and their weaknesses. If you have worked at a job for any amount of time, this is fairly common. I just can’t work-up much excitement for what seemed like a long, sometimes tedious story. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an advance copy for my honest review.

I received this book from NetGalley and was excited to dive into a fiction that dealt with themes surrounding the Chinese restaurant life. I personally grew up as a product of this very niche subculture. I think that Li does some things well here. She illuminates the generational barrier that disallows a conventionally intimate relationship between 1st gen parents, who toil endlessly to pave the way for their progeny, and the 2nd gen children who yearns for the existence of some kind of a relationship and even at times resent the unwelcome gift of toil. She exposes, in rare occasions, that a language barrier can inhibit what communication there is left between generations. Her minor characters, in a restaurant setting where most of the book takes place, have fleeting qualities that lend to the vapid impressions and homogeneity of each character - this is very much accurate to the environment. She dabbles with the organism of Chinese microeconomy and microcosm that would exchange progressive methods of enterprising a restaurant in exchange for loyalty to your people. The cultural differences certainly collide when a business is passed on to children with a completely different framework of goals in enterprising.

At times, I felt like this was more a made-for-TV movie more than a novel because the characters weren't fleshed out more so they seemed a bit cliche. It was somewhat entertaining, but without adding spoiler alerts, I expected more to happen with our two youngest characters in the novel. We get to the end of the novel and are faced with a Six Months Later notice to avoid having the characters
change or reveal any self-discovery.

Number One Chinese Restaurant
By: Lillian Li

I received an e-ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Characters:
The characters are the soul of this book. They were fiercely engaging and hooked me into their lives from the first chapter. There are a lot of characters but each is so vivid and have their own voices. I loved too that these are not always easy people. They are complex and sometimes difficult to like but they were so relatable that I found myself eagerly reading their stories.

Plot and Language:
The language in this book is just so lyrical. I read parts out-loud because they were a joy to hear. The plot is like the language -it’s a complex story hinting at a dark underbelly but occasionally giving the reader humor. It’s the kind of story that keeps you engaged from beginning to end.

Overall;
I loved this book. It explored the relationships in family across three generations. The author’s insights and understanding of each point of view felt like a bit of grace for each character.

Even though I can't say that I connected with any of the characters, this novel was exceptionally well-written. Jimmy is high-strung, mean and constantly trying to prove himself to his deceased father and live up to his overbearing mother's unrealistic parental and cultural expectations. In the beginning, you almost think his brother Johnny is his foil, but towards the end you realize he's battling his own demons and insecurities. And Uncle Pang is the evil villain through it all. It was truly like reading a Chinese soap opera on paper, a very good one I might add.

I am mixed on my reaction to this book; although I felt the last third of the book was really good, I had trouble sticking with it. The characters are basically unlikable, even though the setting for the story is a Chinese restaurant, and the view into another way of life is interesting, I didn't feel we had insight into the characters until Johnny and Feng Fei entered the scene as more than just background players. Jimmy is the main character, and he is just someone I couldn't feel anything for. I would rate this a 3.5.