Number One Chinese Restaurant

April 2, 2018
With echoes of Stewart O’Nan’s Last Night at the Lobster, Li’s insightful debut takes readers behind the scenes of a Chinese restaurant, the Beijing Duck House, in Rockville, Md. Jimmy Han, son of the restaurant’s deceased original owner, runs the business but is trying to sell it to transition to a more upscale venue, the Beijing Glory, an Asian fusion restaurant on the Georgetown waterfront. Jimmy and his older brother, Johnny, have had a running argument about the direction of the Duck House—Johnny wants the restaurant to remain traditional—since the death of their father. Their manager, Nan, and Ah-Jack, a waiter, have been friends for 30 years but lately have become romantically involved. Meanwhile, Nan’s troubled 17-year-old son, Pat, a dishwasher, and Johnny’s disaffected daughter, Annie, a hostess, have been having not-so-secret sex in the storage closet. And hovering over all of them is Uncle Pang, a mysterious, nine-fingered godfather who might hold the key to their futures. Despite the novel’s leisurely plotting, Li vividly depicts the lives of her characters and gives the narrative a few satisfying turns, resulting in a memorable debut.

May 1, 2018
The owner and employees of a venerable Chinese restaurant in the D.C. suburbs face drastic changes in their lives and routines.As Li's debut opens, Jimmy Han is searching his restaurant for Ah-Jack, an elderly waiter who is late with the order of Uncle Pang--an important and dangerous man who is not actually Jimmy's uncle. "At the mouth of the hallway, a current of Duck House staff buffeted Jimmy along. The Chinese and Spanish he'd banned from the dining room filled this narrow space, echoing off the walls. Waiters blocked traffic to grab beer from the lower fridge...busboys huddled against the main waiter station, pouring leftovers into paper cartons with hasty precision....Behind the stainless-steel divider, flames whooshed up to embrace giant woks, each cook casually stir-frying as fire sprang, volcanic, from the deep, blackened burners." Evoking every detail of the setting, operation, cuisine, and culture of this restaurant with riveting verisimilitude, Li sets the stage for a complex family tragedy viewed from many angles. Jimmy has never been happy running the restaurant made famous by his late father; he's making moves to close it down and purchase a fancier venue in downtown Washington with a view of the Potomac. To raise the cash for this venture, he's hired a sexy real estate agent to sell the family mansion--though not if his mother, a bitter old woman who still lives there, has anything to say about it. Then Uncle Pang's behind-the-scenes machinations result in a dramatic catastrophe. Swept up in it are two teenage members of the restaurant's extended family, Jimmy's niece, Annie, and the recently-expelled-from-school busboy, Pat, son of the No. 1 waitress. Though nothing works out for any of the characters the way he or she wants it to, Li's sense of the human comedy and of the aspirations burning in each human heart puts a philosophical spin on the losses of her characters.With its deliciously depicted restaurant setting and knowing perspective on Chinese-American culture, this novel is two-thirds cultural comedy. The other third is something deeper and sadder. A writer to watch.

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May 1, 2018
When Chinese American immigrant Bobby Han died, entrusting his Beijing Duck House restaurant to the next generation, he couldn't have fathomed how quickly his 30-year-old legacy would go up in flames. His younger son, Jimmy?dubbed little boss by the restaurant staff, many of whom watched him grow up?wants out of the suburban Maryland family business, having already bought a swankier Georgetown establishment. Johnny, the older brother, has been avoiding family drama by teaching in Hong Kong, but his reprieve is short-lived. Their aging mother has lost all patience with her incompetent offspring, leaving plenty of room for her sly cousin, Pang, to play out his own machinations. Meanwhile, the Duck House's two longest-standing employees, Jack and Nan, face tribulations of their own: Jack's cancer-weakened wife has seemingly run off; Nan's high-school-expelled son is caught in flagrante with the boss's niece. Debut novelist Li's prominent acknowledgment of her Princeton professors, including Chang-rae Lee, Jeffery Eugenides, and Lorrie Moore, distinctly showcases her literary pedigree in this raucous, bittersweet non-love story across cultures, generations, morals, and other seemingly impossible divides.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

April 1, 2018

Located in Rockville, MD, the Duck House Restaurant is where Bobby Han made his mark until he passed away from cancer. Sons Jimmy and Johnny take over the operation, planning to make the restaurant a bigger name than it was. When a sudden and mysterious fire completely destroys the place, the brothers are left to pick up the pieces along with the help of their most loyal employees, Nan and Ah Jack. Meanwhile, Johnny and daughter Annie are estranged, and Annie becomes dangerously involved with an employee's son. Readers soon discover a world of dysfunction in this first novel by Li, a University of Michigan Hopwood Award winner, as hidden motives and secrets quickly rise to the surface. This relational novel cleverly relays romantic plots among the employees, and Godfather-like underpinnings are seen in the character of Uncle Pang. VERDICT While the work as a whole could have been strengthened with greater character development and stronger plot lines, this light and breezy novel of life behind a Chinese restaurant may contain its share of modern-day stereotypes but is nonetheless an entertaining read. [See Prepub Alert, 12/7/17.]--Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2018

In this debut from a University of Michigan Hopwood Award winner (impressive), trouble strikes the family-run Beijing Duck House in Rockville, MD.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.