Lynn Spencer's Reviews > What We Were Promised

3.5 stars This book is a bit of a family saga which touches on all kinds of issues of identity, family relations, and the meaning of home. However, the story is told in a rather reserved, somewhat detached fashion that made it rather easy for me to keep putting this book down. I enjoyed What We Were Promised while I was reading, but it's one of those books about which I knew I needed to write my review quickly before I forgot the book all together.

The novel focuses primarily on the Zhen family. Wei, Lina and their daughter Karen had been living in Pennsylvania for a number of years before Wei's job brought them back to China. While Wei and Lina had grown up in Suzhou, where their fathers had both worked in a silk factory, they are now living in a luxurious apartment in Shanghai. They live among the ranks of China's new elite. Wei has a job as an executive, while Lina is now a taitai, spending her days dressing nicely and gossiping with other wives in the ex-pat community who live in her building.

Wei and Lina seem to be settling, albeit a bit uneasily, into their new lives back in China when they get the news that will drive most of this story: Wei's brother Qiang, who hasn't been heard from in about 20 years, is coming to visit. This prompts all manner of inner turmoil for both Wei and Lina. Much of the novel focuses on Qiang's visits, as well as on Wei and Lina's past, particularly Lina's. Through her flashbacks, we see some of her past hopes and dreams, and something of her struggle to figure out her own identity.

Much of the Zhen family's history is tied up in their parents' experience of the Cultural Revolution, and those events are woven into the text and as the narrative covers Wei and Lina's childhoods, we see the gradual changes coming to China in the 80s. By the time Wei and Lina return, we can see how greatly their country has changed and as the lead characters try to figure out their own identities in the family, we also see them trying to reconcile their past with a place in modern-day China.

In contrast to the Zhens, we are also brought into the story of Sunny, the maid who cares for the Zhens' apartment. She has come from the provinces to try to make her way in Shanghai and to send money back to relatives at home. She, too, struggles at times to figure out where she belongs in this strange new world that she has found in Shanghai where she has both opportunities and dangers that would have been unheard of in her hometown.

There is a lot of food for thought in this novel, but much of the story is told rather than shown. There were parts of this book that I rather enjoyed, and I appreciated learning more about a part of the world unfamiliar to me. However, if I'm being completely honest, I have to admit that I frequently grew bored of the Zhens even as I found their world intriguing.