What We Were Promised

February 1, 2018

Among the Chinese-born, Western-educated professionals flocking back to rapidly modernizing Shanghai are Zhen Wei and his family. It's a tough adjustment made worse when Wei's bad-boy brother Qiang arrives in town. With a 40,000-copy first printing; from the 2015 winner of Ploughshares' Emerging Writer's Contest.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2018
Like the Emerald City in Oz, contemporary Shanghai provides the backdrop for an examination of the clash between old and new lifestyles and values in Tan's debut novel.Upon moving back to mainland China after more than 20 years in America, the Zhens finds themselves ill at ease in their new opulent and coddled setting. Husband Wei becomes unhappy with his work for a multinational advertising firm, while the previously industrious Lina settles into the unfamiliar role of taitai, a housewife with no housewifely duties and an infinite amount of time to devote to shopping and gossipy meals. Karen, their adolescent daughter, spends most of the year at an American boarding school in order to enjoy the purported advantages of "American privilege." Wei and Lina are strangers to Shanghai themselves, having shared modest beginnings in Suzhou, a silk-farming town. The silent witness to the Zhens' quietly uncomfortable household is Sunny, an observant housekeeper from rural Hefei. When the balance of the Zhens' carefully calibrated domesticity is disrupted by the reappearance of Wei's long-out-of-touch brother, Qiang, the assumptions that underpin the family's fragile equilibrium are tested. In the Zhen household, Tan brings us a microcosm of the conflicts among China's larger populations: residents versus expatriates, wealthy versus poor, urban and commercial versus rural and agrarian. Humming quietly beneath the surface of the day-to-day microdrama in the Zhens' home is the motif of the disappearance of Lina's talismanic ivory bracelet, the story of which reflects the rivalries between more than one set of characters in this portrait of people learning how to live after a period of immense repression.Tan examines the tension behind the facade of the moneyed lifestyle in a still-evolving post-Mao Shanghai, where everyone seems to be an expat in their own country.

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May 28, 2018
Tan’s solid debut centers on Shanghai housewife Lina Zhen and her observant former housekeeper, Sunny. Lina still holds a torch for Qiang, the wild brother of her husband, Wei, though Qiang has been gone for 20 years. After living in the U.S., the Zhen family relocates to Shanghai, now a part of the upper class, for Wei’s lucrative, high-profile marketing job, which allows Lina to forgo working and live a life of leisure. She’s often at home while Wei works late and on weekends, tending to her 12-year-old daughter, Karen, when she isn’t being educated abroad. When Qiang sees Wei on television and contacts the family, Lina looks forward to finally being able to ask him why he reneged on their plans to run away together before her wedding. In anticipation of spending time with Qiang, Lina hires Sunny, their housekeeper of five years before they moved to the U.S., to look after Karen for the summer. Sunny picks up on the situation in the household and wonders how Wei can remain so clueless. Sunny also sends part of her paycheck back to her family in Hefei, who wonder why she prefers to work rather than settle down and have a baby. Sunny and Wei’s stories are arresting, but Qiang and Lina come off as entitled in spite of the author’s efforts to make them sympathetic. Despite this, the novel presents an intriguing portrait of class, duty, and family.

May 15, 2018
Sunny has been working as a housekeeper in Shanghai for five years but faces a predicament when she and her friend, Rose, are accused of stealing a bracelet from the Zhen family. It becomes clear that the Zhens prefer Sunny over Rose when they offer to hire her as their ayi, or full-time housemaid. The Zhens, a wealthy Chinese family, have settled in a luxury living complex in Shanghai after years of chasing the American dream. Wei, a quiet, high-achieving businessman, often neglects his family for his work. His wife, Lina, is a bored housewife who spends her days gossiping with other foreign wives and doing no housework at all. When Wei's younger brother, Qiang, comes back into their lives after decades away, he reminds them of past losses and unfulfilled desires, causing everyone to reevaluate what they've been doing for the good of their country, their family, and themselves. Tan's first novel is beautiful and compassionate as it explores how identity is reinvented and the importance of confronting the past to move into the future.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)