Searching for Sylvie Lee : a novel

Title:

Author:

Kwok, Jean, author.

Personal Author:

Kwok, Jean, author.

ISBN:

9780062834300

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

317 pages ; 24 cm

Abstract:

"A poignant and suspenseful drama that untangles the complicated ties binding three women—two sisters and their mother—in one Chinese immigrant family and explores what happens when the eldest daughter disappears, and a series of family secrets emerge."-- Amazon.com

Subject Term:

Chinese American women -- Fiction.

Family secrets -- Fiction.

Immigrants -- Fiction.

Missing persons -- Fiction.

Sisters -- Fiction.

Genre:

Domestic fiction.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Broad Rock	Book	FICTION KWOK	Searching... Unknown
Searching... East End	Book	FICTION KWOK	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Ginter Park	Book	FICTION KWOK	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Main Library	Book	FICTION KWOK	Searching... Unknown
Searching... West End	Book	FICTION KWOK	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Westover Hills	Book	FICTION KWOK	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

An Instant New York Times Bestseller!

A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick & Emma Roberts Belletrist Book Club Pick!

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK BY New York Times * Time * Marie Claire * Elle * Buzzfeed * Huffington Post * Good Housekeeping * The Week * Goodreads * New York Post * and many more!

"Powerful . . . A twisting tale of love, loss, and dark family secrets." -- Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train and Into the Water

A poignant and suspenseful drama that untangles the complicated ties binding three women--two sisters and their mother--in one Chinese immigrant family and explores what happens when the eldest daughter disappears, and a series of family secrets emerge, from the New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Translation

It begins with a mystery. Sylvie, the beautiful, brilliant, successful older daughter of the Lee family, flies to the Netherlands for one final visit with her dying grandmother--and then vanishes.

Amy, the sheltered baby of the Lee family, is too young to remember a time when her parents were newly immigrated and too poor to keep Sylvie. Seven years older, Sylvie was raised by a distant relative in a faraway, foreign place, and didn't rejoin her family in America until age nine. Timid and shy, Amy has always looked up to her sister, the fierce and fearless protector who showered her with unconditional love.

But what happened to Sylvie? Amy and her parents are distraught and desperate for answers. Sylvie has always looked out for them. Now, it's Amy's turn to help. Terrified yet determined, Amy retraces her sister's movements, flying to the last place Sylvie was seen. But instead of simple answers, she discovers something much more valuable: the truth. Sylvie, the golden girl, kept painful secrets . . . secrets that will reveal more about Amy's complicated family--and herself--than she ever could have imagined.

A deeply moving story of family, secrets, identity, and longing, Searching for Sylvie Lee is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive portrait of an immigrant family. It is a profound exploration of the many ways culture and language can divide us and the impossibility of ever truly knowing someone--especially those we love.

"This is a true beach read! You can't put it down!" - Jenna Bush Hager, Today Show Book Club Pick

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

A Chinese family spanning the U.S. and the Netherlands grapples with the disappearance of one of their own.Twenty-six-year-old Amy Lee is living in her parents' cramped Queens apartment when she gets a frantic call from Lukas Tan, the Dutch second cousin she's never met. Her successful older sister, Sylvie, who had flown to the Netherlands to see their ailing grandmother, is missing. Amy's questions only mount as she looks into Sylvie's disappearance. Why does Sylvie's husband, Jim, look so bedraggled when Amy tracks him down, and why are all his belongings missing from the Brooklyn Heights apartment he and Sylvie share? Why is Sylvie no longer employed by her high-powered consulting firm? And when Amy finally musters up the courage to travel to the Netherlands for the first time, why do her relativesthe Tan family, including Lukas and his parents, Helena and Willemact so strangely whenever Sylvie is brought up? Amy's search is interlaced with chapters from Sylvie's point of view from a month earlier as she returns to the Netherlands, where she had been sent as a baby by parents who couldn't afford to keep her, to be raised by the Tans. As Amy navigates fraught police visits and her own rising fears, she gradually uncovers the family's deepest secrets, some of them decades old. Though the novel is rife with romantic entanglements and revelations that wouldn't be amiss in a soap opera, its emotional core is the bond between the Lee sisters, one of mutual devotion and a tinge of envy. Their intertwined relationship is mirrored in the novel's structuretheir alternating chapters, separated in time and space, echo each other. Both ride the same bike through the Tans' village, both encounter the same dashing cellist. Kwok (Mambo in Chinatown, 2014, etc.), who lives in the Netherlands, is eloquent on the clumsy, overt racism Chinese people face there: "Sometimes I think that because we Dutch believe we are so emancipated, we become blind to the faults in ourselves," one of her characters says. But the book is a meditation not just on racism, but on (not) belonging: "When you were different," Sylvie thinks, "who knew if it was because of a lack of social graces or the language barrier or your skin color?"A frank look at the complexities of family, race and culture. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.