Contemporary Authors

• What We Were Promised ( novel) Little, Brown and Co. (New York, NY), 2018

1. What we were promised https://lccn.loc.gov/2017944470 Tan, Lucy. What we were promised / Lucy Tan. 1st edition. New York, NY : Little, Brown and Co., 2018. pages cm ISBN: 9780316437189

• Lucy Tan - http://lucyrtan.com/bio

  Lucy Tan is the author of "What We Were Promised", available now from Little, Brown (Hachette Book Group). Though raised in the suburbs of New Jersey, she has spent most of the past ten years in New York City and Shanghai. Her stories explore these and other spaces, with special focus on characters who have a shifting sense of what they call "home."

  Lucy holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was winner of the August Derleth Prize. This fall, she will join the UW faculty as the 2018-2019 James C. McCreight Fellow in Fiction. A recipient of support from Kundiman, NY State Summer Writers Institute, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, Lucy has published in journals such as Asia Literary Review, Sixfold, and Ploughshares, where she was fiction winner of the 2015 Emerging Writer's Contest.

  In her pre-writer days, Lucy was a product manager and an actress who was once caked in the face alongside Jennifer Lawrence.

QUOTED: "Tan's first novel is beautiful and compassionate as it explores how identity is reinvented."

What We Were Promised
Emily Park
Booklist.
114.18 (May 15, 2018): p25. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
What We Were Promised.
By Lucy Tan.
July 2018.320p. Little, Brown, $26 (9780316437189); e-book, $13.99 (9780316437219).
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.--Emily Park
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Park, Emily. "What We Were Promised." Booklist, 15 May 2018, p. 25. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A541400808/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=4dabf348. Accessed 1 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A541400808
1 of 4 10/1/18, 12:26 AM
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Tan, Lucy: WHAT WE WERE PROMISED
Kirkus Reviews.
(May 1, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Tan, Lucy WHAT WE WERE PROMISED Little, Brown (Adult Fiction) $26.00 7, 10 ISBN: 978-0-316-43718-9
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.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Tan, Lucy: WHAT WE WERE PROMISED." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2018. Book Review Index
Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536571208/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=97dbad88. Accessed 1 Oct. 2018.
2 of 4 10/1/18, 12:26 AM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Gale Document Number: GALE|A536571208

QUOTED: "The novel presents an'intriguing portrait of class, duty, and family."

3 of 4 10/1/18, 12:26 AM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
What We Were Promised
Publishers Weekly.
265.22 (May 28, 2018): p68. From Business Collection. COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
What We Were Promised
Lucy Tan. Little, Brown, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-0316-43718-9
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. July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"What We Were Promised." Publishers Weekly, 28 May 2018, p. 68. Business Collection,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A541638772/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=c9861b07. Accessed 1 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A541638772
4 of 4 10/1/18, 12:26 AM

Park, Emily. "What We Were Promised." Booklist, 15 May 2018, p. 25. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A541400808/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=4dabf348. Accessed 1 Oct. 2018. "Tan, Lucy: WHAT WE WERE PROMISED." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2018. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536571208/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=97dbad88. Accessed 1 Oct. 2018. "What We Were Promised." Publishers Weekly, 28 May 2018, p. 68. Business Collection, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A541638772/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=c9861b07. Accessed 1 Oct. 2018.

• USA Today
  https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2018/07/10/book-review-what-we-were-promised-lucy-tan-chinese-american-expats/721926002/
  Word count: 803

  QUOTED: "What We Were Promised glows through its intimate, skillful prose. Tan’s debut is a beautiful reckoning with the ever-changing definition of 'home'—what it means to have, lose and find family again."

  Chinese-American expat family drama sparks Lucy Tan's promising debut novel
  Grace Li, USA TODAY Published 11:35 a.m. ET July 10, 2018 | Updated 1:43 p.m. ET July 24, 2018
  636664954556315417-What-We-Were-Promised-HC.jpg

  (Photo: Little, Brown)

  Homecomings aren’t always sweet. And for Lina and her husband, Wei, they can be outright dangerous when a long-lost brother’s return threatens to pull their family apart.

  This seemingly inconspicuous visit sparks generations of stories fraught with star-crossed romance, familial anxiety and expat privilege in Lucy Tan’s debut novel, “What We Were Promised” (Little, Brown, 336 pp., ★★★½ out of four).

  The book takes place in Shanghai, a hybrid city – part frenetic metropolis and part historical monument, constantly morphed by both Chinese and global influences.

  It’s the perfect setting for Tan as she artfully tumbles back and forth in time and place, from the silk factories of Lina and Wei’s childhoods to the lonely landscapes of America and back to China again, where they try to reconcile family tensions in the wealthy high-rises of Shanghai.

  Rather fittingly, the novel starts in transit. In 1988, Lina and Wei stand in the Shanghai Hongqiao airport terminal, on their way to start new lives in America. Just months before their arranged marriage, Lina fell in love with Qiang, Wei’s rebellious younger brother, who suddenly disappeared and is assumed dead because of his gang involvement.

  Fast-forward 22 years, and Wei receives a call from Qiang, who is very much alive and wants to reconcile with his brother and Lina.
  Author Lucy Tan.

  Author Lucy Tan. (Photo: Sarah Rose Smiley)

  But a lot has changed in the time Qiang has been gone: Both Lina and Wei have spent years working for success in America, and are back in China as wealthy expats.

  Lina and Wei's parents are dead from a tragic train crash, but the two now have a quick-witted daughter named Karen, who studies in the States. Though the three of them spend their summer days together in Shanghai’s luxurious Lanson Suites, Lina finds that they really live in the “in-between,” a space that is neither Chinese nor American.

  “What had been the point of immigrating if not to enjoy American privilege?” the novel asks.

  The answer is not so simple, Tan illustrates, as she takes her time fleshing out the multitudes that go into an identity: national obligations, family responsibility, the guilt of newfound wealth, and above all, love.

  The family drama unfolds quietly in front of Sunny, their ever-perceptive housekeeper in China. She adds her own dimension to the story after her co-worker, Rose, steals Lina’s treasured ivory bracelet, a shameful admittance that the foreign and expatriate wealthy residents’ “belongings had power over (Rose), that their wealth was worth exactly what they wanted it to be worth.”

  “What We Were Promised” is bustling with themes like these, ones that focus on the terrifyingly complex facets of what it means to be Chinese-American, an immigrant, and an expat. But Tan certainly has enough bandwidth to handle these heavy topics, sifting them through a single family with forlorn honesty and compassion.

  The only time Tan’s extraordinary pacing fails is when the central conflict between Lina and Qiang is resolved quickly after Qiang's return. All it takes is the revelation of a single secret, wrapping up this sweeping family drama too neatly.

  But it’s a small critique, because “What We Were Promised” glows through its intimate, skillful prose. Tan’s debut is a beautiful reckoning with the ever-changing definition of “home” – what it means to have, lose and find family again.
  Share your feedback to help improve our site experience!
  USA Today's Best-Selling Books List

  1
  Fear
  Bob Woodward
  2
  Juror #3
  James Patterson, Nancy Allen
  3
  Girl, Wash Your Face
  Rachel Hollis
  4
  Dog Man: Lord of the Fleas
  Dav Pilkey
  5
  Shadow Tyrants
  Clive Cussler, Boyd Morrison

  USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books List
  POPULAR STORIES
  Ryan Reynolds trolls Blake Lively's risqué photo
  usatoday.com
  13 hours ago
  Meghan Markle's wedding veil tribute to queen
  usatoday.com
  17 hours ago
  Gwyneth Paltrow gets married
  usatoday.com
  5 hours ago
  Kanye West goes on a pro-Trump rant after 'SNL'
  usatoday.com
  6 hours ago
  'SNL': Weekend Update unloads on Brett Kavanaugh
  usatoday.com
  6 hours ago

• Bustle
  https://www.bustle.com/p/what-we-were-promised-by-lucy-tan-is-a-stunning-novel-about-the-promises-we-make-to-ourselves-each-other-9768193
  Word count: 1823

  QUOTED: "I wrote this novel from multiple perspectives because I wanted to highlight how much my characters misunderstood about one another."
  "When you’re in a position of privilege, like Lina and Wei are, it’s especially easy to discount the experience of a migrant worker like Sunny," she says. "How often does Lina think about Sunny, her nanny, who spends every day in her home? A handful of times, throughout the entire novel. Sunny, on the other hand, spends most of her time worrying about the family that employs her. She thinks about everything from their food preferences, to the Zhens' marriage, to the health of their daughter. The novel ends without the Zhens ever knowing Sunny’s given name."
  "I think this is an example of how entire experiences—and communities—can become invisible to the privileged majority."

  'What We Were Promised' By Lucy Tan Is A Stunning Novel About The Promises We Make To Ourselves & Each Other
  ByE. Ce Miller
  3 months ago

  What the bio in the back of Lucy Tan’s novel, What We Were Promised won’t tell you is that the debut author was once “caked in the face alongside Jennifer Lawrence” — a nod to Tan’s early aspirations (actress, as well as writer) and her brief appearance in a 2005 promo for MTV’s My Super Sweet 16. “I didn’t know it then, but the quiet, mature 15-year-old who played the birthday girl, and with whom I shared a cab ride back to Manhattan, would one day win an Oscar,” Tan tells Bustle in an email. “I still can’t believe I got to witness Jennifer Lawrence’s first acting role ever! Sadly, but not surprisingly, my own acting “career” fizzled shortly after.” As a reader of Tan’s work — not only of her novel, but of short pieces like "Cachito", which appeared in Sixfold Journal and "Safety of Numbers", for which she won the 2015 Ploughshares' Emerging Writer's Contest — I can say: readers will be glad it did.

  What We Were Promised interweaves the stories of an expat family recently returned to China, a long-lost brother, and a rural-born housekeeper finding her footing in modern Shanghai. The novel speaks to unrequited love and family tensions, as well as what it means to feel out of place, both as an immigrant and in one’s country of origin. The Zhen family — wife Lina, husband Wei, and their daughter Karen — have recently returned to China after over a decade living in the United States. Qiang, Wei’s brother, appears in Shanghai after being thought dead for years. Sunny, the Wei's housekeeper, has moved from her hometown in rural China in search of social and financial independence.

  “I wrote this novel from multiple perspectives because I wanted to highlight how much my characters misunderstood about one another,” says Tan. What We Were Promised weaves in and out of the past and present, and is told through the alternating voices of Sunny, Lina, and, though less frequently, Wei and Qiang as well. It also highlights the class struggles of modern-day China: the Zhen family live in an elite community of Chinese-born, Western-educated professionals, while their employee, Sunny, is lives a lifestyle modest enough to send the majority of her income home to her parents.

  "I wrote this novel from multiple perspectives because I wanted to highlight how much my characters misunderstood about one another."

  “When you’re in a position of privilege, like Lina and Wei are, it’s especially easy to discount the experience of a migrant worker like Sunny," she says. "How often does Lina think about Sunny, her nanny, who spends every day in her home? A handful of times, throughout the entire novel. Sunny, on the other hand, spends most of her time worrying about the family that employs her. She thinks about everything from their food preferences, to the Zhens' marriage, to the health of their daughter. The novel ends without the Zhens ever knowing Sunny’s given name." (All the housekeepers in Tan’s novel adopt English names, with the idea of making their employers more comfortable.)

  Like many immigrant and expat stories, Wei, Lina, and Karen each struggle with feeling simultaneously at home and displaced — geographically, socially, and economically. Sunny is also torn between her chosen home of Shanghai and her rural hometown and her desire to be a woman with economic independence within her family culture.

  "Sunny isn’t an immigrant, but as a single woman coming into the city from the countryside, she may as well be," Tan says. "I think this is an example of how entire experiences — and communities — can become invisible to the privileged majority. Immigrants are rarely in the position to tell their stories to a wider audience, and so it’s that much more important for the rest of us to go out in search of them. And, when appropriate, to speak up for those who can’t.”
  Photo by Sarah Rose Smiley

  In her own life, Tan has traversed the terrain her characters move across as well. “I was born and raised in the United States, but my parents are from Wuhan, a major city in China,” the author says. “Though I’d visited China plenty of times growing up, I didn’t have my first encounter with rural China until I was 17-years-old."

  The then-teenage Tan traveled to China as part of program designed to connect Chinese-Americans with the homeland of their parents, exploring much of the country by bus. "I got to experience the Chinese countryside for the first time," Tan says. "I harvested rice from rice paddies, ate local delicacies, and got good at using squat toilets. Imagine my surprise, then, when I moved to Shanghai after college and found it to be more modern than New York City. It was home to the tallest skyscrapers I’d ever seen, and more seemed to be popping up every few months. The quickly changing landscape of the city fascinated me, and I knew I’d want to write about it one day.”

  "Imagine my surprise, then, when I moved to Shanghai after college and found it to be more modern than New York City."

  In addition to tensions generated by location, What We Were Promised is also filled with family tension. Each of Tan’s characters, in their own ways, are fueled by familial obligations that are simultaneously restrictive and freeing. When Lina is first married to Wei, she thinks: “Marriage. America… How could two things that represented such different experiences — one a limitation, the other an adventure — be wrapped up in one?” Sunny also finds freedom within her obligations to her family: earning more money for them also means an opportunity to improve her own quality of life. The narrative of familial obligations being a burden is a familiar one for many, but the idea of finding freedom in your obligations to your family is perhaps less so, at least in the Western culture many of Tan’s readers will be most familiar with.

  “I think a lot of this comes from difference in values between East and West,” Tan says, comparing the individualistic culture of the United States, to the family-centered culture of China. “In America, we champion the individual. Kids do chores to earn allowances and later take on their own student loans. They’re taught from a young age to value their independence. It’s this mindset that fuels our marketplace and our culture. In China, family is generally valued over the individual. Adults make fundamental sacrifices for their children, and when the children become adults, they return the favor."

  "In China, family is generally valued over the individual. Adults make fundamental sacrifices for their children, and when the children become adults, they return the favor."

  She describes the guilt that can often result from making decisions independently, compared to the pride of making one's parent's happy — a journey her character Sunny will take, before the novel's end. "I think many people try to find a path in between," Tan says. "When Sunny chooses to leave home, she gets a little of both worlds — she’s able to support her family financially while living in a city where she can be independent. Lina, too, sees her marriage to Wei as a compromise. She gets to experience freedom through travel while still following her parents’ wishes by marrying Wei. There are times, though, when both Sunny and Lina wonder if compromise is enough.”

  What We Were Promised by Lucy Tan, $20.40, Amazon

  In a nod to feminist literature, Lina is drawn to Simon de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex — the classic is a formative book during her college years. The line that resonates most with Lina is: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," — suggesting that What We Were Promised, ultimately, is about becoming someone other than (or perhaps more than) who you were born. Tan agrees. “So much of Lina’s, Sunny’s, and even Wei’s upbringings have taught them to improve their stations in life thereby improving the stations of their family. Such goals include marrying well, having children, gaining education and/or getting a good job. Their desires to ascend don’t change as they enter adulthood, but the ways they measure that ascension do. By whose values should they live? How much of their parents’ beliefs do they still subscribe to? These are the questions they attempt to answer throughout the novel.”

  "Their desires to ascend don’t change as they enter adulthood, but the ways they measure that ascension do. By whose values should they live?"

  Tan's original title for What We Were Promised was actually "The Insolvents" — Tan explaining that she wanted to use the novel to explore ideas of debt: financial debt, national debt, the ways people become indebted to one another. But, as Tan says, “The word 'promise' is more fitting for this story, where so many promises are made and broken. And then there is the greatest promise of all, the one you make to yourself when you’re young: that you’ll live your life in a way that you’re proud of. This book opens at a moment of self-reckoning, when main characters are asking themselves if they’ve done this.”

  The ultimate message of What We Were Promised is one all young, millennial readers can relate to. Tan says that the novel asks readers: “To question the things you’re expected to do, to treasure love in all its forms, and to find a way live for yourself in a world that does (and should) ask you to support others.”

• All About Romance
  https://allaboutromance.com/book-review/what-we-were-promised-by-lucy-tan/
  Word count: 1072

  Desert Isle Keeper
  What We Were Promised

  Lucy Tan

  Buy This Book

  What We Were Promised is both a look at life in modern day China and an observation on the unchanging nature of humanity. “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main” John Donne told us. This book shows that as a universal truth.

  After years of going to college and then working in America, the small Zhen family of Wei, Lina and Karen have moved back to China. Wei is a success story, having acquired wealth and status far beyond what was available in the small village in which he was raised. A perfectionist who has excelled since early childhood at pretty much everything he has attempted, he is now able to house his family in a luxurious, full service apartment complex filled with other ex-pats: Chinese-born, Western-educated professionals who have returned to a new, thriving China.

  Meanwhile, their housekeeper Sunny embodies the difficulties within her modern nation. She did not rise above her small village roots but was forced out of them by a family who had no place for an unmarried woman unwilling to give them grandchildren. She keeps a professional, courteous distance from the Zhens’ lives until she is invited to be the family ayi for the summer. As a nanny/cook/ and all-around errand girl, she sees first-hand the tensions that are slowly unraveling them. Boss Zhen is very good at his job but doesn’t like it. With her daughter spending the school year in America and with no work for her to do in the house, Lina has become a taitai, a rich woman whose only function is to look pretty, and gossip with friends. Daughter Karen has no real place in her home, since it is only her home for a few months of the year. Spoiled and lonely, she latches unto Sunny as a lifeline.

  When Qiang, Wei’s long-lost brother, reconnects with the Zhens, he sets off a quiet chain of events which makes them question whether what they have has been worth the sacrifices they made to get it.

  What attracted me to this story was the opportunity to read a novel set in modern China. The book certainly delivered on that aspect of the tale, providing a fascinating view of life in Shanghai from several different aspects. I also appreciated the in-depth looks the author affords us into the past, from the re-education camp to which Lina’s father was sent during the post revolution years, to the villages Wei and Sunny grew up in. I loved how the story encompasses changing attitudes toward family, marriage and tradition. The author absolutely excells at her setting.

  She also does a great job with her characters. I loved Sunny and Wei; I would also have enjoyed spending more time with Wei’s father, who seemed a very, very interesting character in his own right. All three are people who go above and beyond; who work hard and never quit trying to be their best selves. That kind of positive, vibrant spirit reflects, I think, the spirit of modern Shanghai and China itself. A desire to rise above the sorrows and challenges of the past and be better and stronger for the future. The symbiosis of the characters, culture and city in this arena is masterfully handled.

  Sunny and Lina, as the primary women in the story, present deeply contrasting personalities and also, I think, reflect the difference between the past and present of the country. Lina, having had the same opportunities as Wei, doesn’t take advantage of them as much. She reminds me of the wives and concubines depicted in tales about ancient China, obsessed with the politics of the women’s quarters which is, in this case, her modern apartment complex. She is also obsessed with the past; with her father’s incarceration, her mother’s strange reactions to the Zhens and with Qiang.

  Qiang’s character was perhaps the most difficult one for me to wrap my head around. When I heard his backstory, I almost felt sorry for him, but by then, I didn’t like him. There is a scene about midway through the book which shows he had a rather sadistic nature even in early childhood. He seems to have an innate cruelty, even though for the bulk of his life he has been treated with great kindness.

  A line from Wei captured best what I think drove both Lina and Qiang:

  Qiang and Lina were both entitled and had never doubted for a moment they’d be taken care of. They were the kinds of people who blamed others for the things that went wrong in their lives.

  I thought that exemplified a lot of what the author was showing us in the book; the differing attitudes between those who seize opportunities and those who throw them away. How an obsession with what happened in the past, such as Qiang and Lina have, is different from a respect for it, which Wei has; and how that subtle difference can play out badly in real life.

  The last line of the story is really intriguing and thought provoking as well.

  These objects of luxury they handled – how easy it was to fill them with meaning, to let them represent what you did or didn’t have. How difficult, in fact, to know what you wanted in the first place.

  We do imbue objects with no intrinsic value with far more worth than they should have, physically or emotionally. This story is about that, too; what we really want from life and what we will give to attain it.

  What We Were Promised is a character-driven tale which reflects the heart and soul of a nation going through great changes. It’s a beautifully written, evocative and provocative narrative which shows that human nature is the same the world over, even when our lives look superficially different.
  Buy it at: Amazon/Barnes & Noble/iBooks/Kobo
  Buy What We Were Promised by Lucy Tan:
  Buy from Amazon.com Get it on iBooks Nook Kobo

• Shelf Awareness
  https://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=3273#m40805
  Word count: 3058

  QUOTED: "With its measuring of expectation against reality, What We Were Promised establishes Tan as a new talent with a sharp eye for the intricacies of human relationships."

  News
  Briars & Brambles Books Coming to the Catskills
  Jen Schwartz

  Briars & Brambles Books will open in Windham, N.Y., on July 1. Located in the heart of the Catskill Mountains in Alpine Garden Village, the 1,200-square-foot bookstore will offer 6,000 titles, with a regional section featuring titles set in the Catskills and written by local authors. The space has a central fireplace and some seating, with a back area featuring a table where customers are welcome to help complete a puzzle.

  In addition to books, the store will carry puzzles, games, stationery and small gifts. It also plans to hold regular author events, book signings, book groups and other community events.

  Owner and part-time Windham resident Jen Schwartz is a former English teacher and longtime library volunteer. She said the idea of opening a bookstore came in December: "I had just finished A Gentleman in Moscow and realized that I had forgotten to pack another book," she recalled. "The closest bookstore was a half hour away and with a snowstorm approaching, I didn't want to risk driving."

  Schwartz said that the area has a growing population of full-time and weekend residents. She aims to make the store a part of the community and is working closely with other local business and will carry a line of specially made granola and toffee, proceeds of which will be donated to local not-for-profit organizations.

  Rare Bird Books, a Vireo Book: Cry Wilderness by Frank Capra
  Winchester Book Gallery Moving After 44 Years
  Winchester Book Gallery's new location.

  The Winchester Book Gallery in Winchester, Va., is moving down the street to a new, larger location later this summer, the Winchester Star reported. The new, 1,800-square-foot space is around 400 square feet larger than the current location and is in a building that is being purchased by Book Gallery owner Christine Patrick and her family.

  The 46-year-old independent bookstore will move on August 1, after the deal to purchase the new building closes on July 16. The Book Gallery has leased its current space, at 185 N. Loudon Street, since 1974. The store will relocate to 7 N. Loudon Street, between a theater and a restaurant.

  Patrick told the Winchester Star that the new space will be large enough to allow the store to hold author events without having to rearrange any bookshelves, display tables or other furniture. That way, she said, the store can better host book clubs, community meetings and game nights, which would have meant sacrificing shopping and browsing space at the current store.

  Christine and her husband, Brian Patrick, are the 10th owners of the Winchester Book Gallery, having owned and operated the store since 2011. "We are very excited to be moving down the block in Old Town where we will continue this great literary tradition and work hard to help the Book Gallery celebrate 50 years in 2022," wrote Christine Patrick.

  Soho Press: 2018 National Book Foundation Honorees
  Bill Gates Offers Book Present to U.S. College Grads

  "If you're getting a degree from a U.S. college this spring, I have a present for you," Bill Gates tweeted recently.

  The Microsoft co-founder is donating a digital copy of "one of my favorite books," Hans Rosling's Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (Flatiron Books), to "everyone who's getting a degree from a U.S. college or university this spring.... Although I think everyone should read it, it has especially useful insights for anyone who's making the leap out of college and into the next phase of life." Graduates must sign up or log in as a Gates Notes Insider to download the book.

  KidsBuzz for the Week of 10.01.18
  Obituary Note: Stephen Reid

  Stephen Reid, "who helped carry out a long series of meticulously executed bank robberies in Canada and the United States and then became a well-regarded author before returning to his original trade," died June 12, the New York Times reported. He was 68. With Patrick Mitchell and Lionel Wright, Reid was a member of "a group of well-dressed bandits" known as the Stop Watch Gang.

  After doing time in 20 prisons over 40 years, Reid eventually became a writer, championed and guided by his future wife, noted Canadian poet and author Susan Musgrave. In 1984, he sent a manuscript to Musgrave, who was then a writer in residence at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. She edited what became Jack Rabbit Parole, a semi-autobiographical novel, and their personal relationship grew. They married in 1986, "the year his novel was published to critical acclaim and robust sales," at a maximum-security prison in British Columbia, the Times wrote.

  Al Forrie of Thistledown Press, publisher of Reid's essay collection A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden: Writing from Prison, said Reid, who was of Irish and Ojibway ancestry, had used his experience in prison to try to reshape public attitudes toward convicts. He was particularly disturbed by the large number of indigenous men in jail.

  Despite his marriage and his literary success, he robbed a bank in 1999 in Victoria, British Columbia, for which he was sentenced to 18 years in prison "and spent some of his last years returning to jail for parole violations," the Times wrote.

  "Stephen Reid was many things: notorious robber, addict and long-serving prisoner," said Shelagh Rogers, host of CBC's The Next Chapter. "But I hope that as we look back at his life, his writing will be acknowledged, as well."

  Bookselling Without Borders: Connecting U.S. Booksellers to the World of Books - Click to Support!
  G.L.O.W. - Galley Love of the Week
  Be the first to have an advance copy!
  Nikki on the Line
  by Barbara Carroll Roberts

  Nikki lives for basketball--she and her best friend have been playing together since they were in kindergarten. Now 13, Nikki desperately wants to join the Northern Virginia Action, an extremely competitive club team. At 5'4", though, she's the shortest girl trying out. Will she make the team? And, if she does, can she be a real competitor? As a kid growing up in the '60s, author Barbara Carroll Roberts, who played basketball in high school, wanted books about girls who were loud and fast and strong; she never got them, so she wrote one. Little, Brown executive editor Lisa Yoskowitz, who "fell in love with Nikki on the Line from the moment [she] dipped into the manuscript," highlights this as part of what makes Nikki so special: the book "puts a female athlete front and center, depicting the often formative experience of being part of a team." Nikki's middle-grade voice is warm, authentic and delightful, sure to win over readers, whatever their feelings about basketball. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness

  (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, $16.99 hardcover, 9780316521901, March 5, 2019)
  CLICK HERE TO ENTER
  #ShelfGLOW
  Shelf vetted, publisher supported

  Notes
  Image of the Day: Doing Nothing at Green Apple

  Last week, Green Apple Books on the Park, San Francisco, Calif., hosted a launch event for Roman Muradov, author of On Doing Nothing: Finding Inspiration in Idleness (Chronicle Books). From l.: Emily Ballaine, store manager; Roman Muradov; Bridget Watson Payne, executive editor at Chronicle; and Mirabelle Korn, associate editor at Chronicle.

  Disney-Hyperion: The Last Life of Prince Alastor (Prosper Redding #2) by Alexandra Bracken
  Quail Ridge Books Wins Best of Triangle Awards

  After two years at its North Hills location in Raleigh, N.C., Quail Ridge Books has simultaneously been honored with Indy Week's Best of the Triangle 2018 Best Bookstore award and by Triangle Downtowner magazine's Best of Downtowner 2018 in the Independent Bookstore category.

  BrocheAroe Fabian, the bookshop's marketing manager, said: "These awards really speak to the incredible amount of hard work our staff has put into maintaining established relationships and cultivating new relationships with our customers, as well as the inspiring leadership of our new owner, Lisa Poole, and our management team, led by longtime QRB staff member, Sarah Goddin. We are grateful for the community support in helping to make us the best of the Triangle once again! It has been the perfect way to celebrate our two-year anniversary in our new North Hills home."

  Shelf Awareness Giveaway: Ambrosia: Tessa & Scott: Our Journey from Childhood Dream to Gold by Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir with Steve Milton
  Window Display of the Day: Hickory Stick Bookshop

  Hickory Stick Bookshop, Washington Depot, Conn., has come down with a case of World Cup fever. The bookstore shared pics of its front window display, tweeting: "Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooaaaal!!!!! Did you catch #WorldCup fever over the weekend and want to learn more about soccer or just can't get enough? We have a wide array of soccer titles for fans of all ages and levels of interest."
  Personnel Changes at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Celadon Books

  Matt Schweitzer has joined Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade Publishing as senior v-p, marketing, responsible for the marketing of all adult, young readers and lifestyle titles. He was most recently senior director, integrated marketing at HarperCollins Children's Books and prior to that held marketing and brand management positions at American Greetings Properties and Ragdoll Ltd.

  ---

  Effective July 9, Christine Mykityshyn is joining Celadon Books as director of publicity and will work closely with marketing, editorial and Macmillan sales teams. She has worked in the Random House Publishing Group for the last six years, most recently as publicity manager.
  Book Trailer of the Day: Ark Land

  Ark Land by Scott A. Ford (ChiGraphic).
  Media and Movies
  Media Heat: David E. Sanger on Fresh Air

  Today:
  Today Show: Gary Vaynerchuk, author of Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence--and How You Can, Too (HarperBusiness, $29.99, 9780062674678)

  Fresh Air: David E. Sanger, author of The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age (Crown, $28, 9780451497895).

  Tomorrow:
  CBS This Morning: Mona Hanna-Attisha, author of What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City (One World, $28, 9780399590832).
  Movies: The Grinch

  Illumination and Universal Pictures have released a new trailer for The Grinch, based on Dr. Seuss' holiday classic book. Benedict Cumberbatch lends his voice to the infamous Grinch in the film directed by Yarrow Cheney and Scott Mosier from a screenplay by Michael LeSieur and Tommy Swerdlow. The Grinch hits theaters November 9.

  Are you ready to make a move? The best publishers and
  bookstores tell us whom they want to hire. It could be you!
  Here are 10 of 22 active listings.
  Associate Marketing Manager, Phaidon, New York, NY
  President, CEO and Publisher, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Oakland, CA
  Director of University Press, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA
  Sales Associate, Special Markets, Macmillan, New York, NY
  Executive Director of Publicity, Macmillan, New York, NY
  Publicity Assistant, Phaidon Press, New York, NY
  Contracts Associate, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY
  Client Relations Manager, Ingram Content Group, New York, NY
  Production Manager, Macmillan, New York, NY
  Assistant Manager, BookHampton, East Hampton, NY
  Click here to view our job board.

  Books & Authors
  Awards: CILIP Carnegie, Kate Greenaway Medals; Miles Franklin

  British author Geraldine McCaughrean won her second CILIP Carnegie Medal for children's literature for Where the World Ends, and Canadian illustrator Sydney Smith took the CILIP Kate Greenway Medal for excellence in illustration for Town Is by the Sea. The winners each receive £500 (about $660) worth of books to donate to their local library, a specially commissioned golden medal and the £5,000 (about $6,625) Colin Mears Award. The medals are judged by children's librarians across the U.K.

  McCaughrean, whose win comes 30 years after her first Carnegie Medal, for A Pack of Lies in 1988, said: "Fiction can achieve marvelous things, especially inside individual heads, not least when it subtly nudge-nudge-nudges the reader towards minding more, thinking more, asking questions. It's been said often in recent years that 'literary' fiction for young people has had its day. We master words by meeting them, not by avoiding them. The only way to make books--and knowledge--accessible is to give children the necessary words. And how has that always been done? By adult conversation and reading. Since when has one generation ever doubted and pitied the next so much that it decides not to burden them with the full package of the English language but to feed them only a restricted diet of simple worlds? The worst and most wicked outcome of all would be that we deliberately and wantonly create an underclass of citizens with a small but functional vocabulary: easy to manipulate and lacking in the means to reason their way out of subjugation, because you need words to be able to think for yourself. In my opinion, young readers should be bombarded with words like gamma rays, steeped in words like pot plants stood in water, pelted with them like confetti, fed on them like alphabetti spaghetti, given Hamlet's last resort: 'Words. Words. Words.' "

  Jake Hope, chair of this year's judging panel, commented: "As librarians, we promote education and knowledge for all, and we heartily endorse Geraldine's call for intellectual freedom through stories with rich language and complex themes which equip all children with the tools to understand--and, in some cases, change--the world around them....

  "Sydney Smith's Town Is by the Sea skillfully balances an intimate story of a child's world of play and wonder alongside a bigger story of a whole community and culture built around mining. Its illustrations are impressive and expansive in scope and beautifully evoke both time and place. Both winners are expertly crafted and hold interest and appeal for a range of readers of all tastes and ages."

  Recipients in the Amnesty CILIP Honor category, a commendation for the book on each shortlist that "most distinctively illuminates, upholds or celebrates freedoms," went to American author Angie Thomas for The Hate U Give (Carnegie shortlist) and British artist and former Medal winner (Black Dog, 2013) Levi Pinfold for The Song from Somewhere Else by A.F. Harrold (Kate Greenaway shortlist).

  ---

  The shortlist was unveiled for Australia's prestigious A$60,000 (about US$44,655) Miles Franklin Award, given annually to a novel which is judged to be "of the highest literary merit" and presents "Australian life in any of its phases." The winner will be announced August 26. This year's shortlisted titles are:

  No More Boats by Felicity Castagna
  The Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser
  The Last Garden by Eva Hornung
  Storyland by Catherine McKinnon
  Border Districts by Gerald Murnane
  Taboo by Kim Scott
  Book Review
  Review: What We Were Promised

  What We Were Promised by Lucy Tan (Little, Brown, $26 hardcover, 336p., 9780316437189, July 10, 2018)
  Winner of Ploughshares' Emerging Writer award, Lucy Tan draws an astute portrait of a staid family thrown into disarray in this assured first novel.

  After growing up in a silk-farming village, Lina Zhen left China as a new bride to pursue the American dream with Wei, the husband her father chose for her. Years later, the couple returns to Shanghai, though their 12-year-old daughter, Karen, still spends the school term in the United States. Financially successful thanks to Wei's career in marketing, the Zhens move into the luxurious Lanson Suites, where former teacher Lina settles into life as a taitai--a housewife with no housekeeping responsibilities.

  Both struggle to adjust: Lina striving to put on a polished appearance to fit in with the other wives in the apartment complex, Wei feeling that his work has no greater purpose. When Wei's brother, Qiang, calls after decades of no communication, his plan to visit throws Lina and Wei into private tailspins. Wei has spent years wondering if Qiang, who fell in with a gang as a teenager, is dead or alive. Lina, whose girlhood love for Qiang has lain dormant but not dead, wonders if he is finally coming back for her. From the sidelines, their new ayi Sunny watches the quiet drama unfold, her understanding of the Zhens' lives and secrets as incomplete as their knowledge of her meager existence working as a housekeeper to send money home to her family in rural Hefei. Set against the backdrop of the 2010 World Expo, the Zhens' reunion will reopen old wounds and uncover the truths that divided them in the first place.

  Tan does not explore the Tolstoyan adage that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, but rather throws a stone into the still pool of carefully balanced domesticity. Though set within Shanghai's Chinese-born, Western-educated repatriate community, the push and pull of family ties and rivalries could as easily occur in any place and time. Lina faces the struggle of whether to reach for the elusive passion of youth or cling to the solidity of her marriage. Wei feels adrift in his own family, losing his connection with his wife and daughter as he spends long hours at his unfulfilling job.

  However, the background of how Lina and Wei's families met and became friends during the Maoist revolution draw a clear contrast between China's turbulent past and Shanghai's glittering present. Furthermore, the difference between Sunny's flat, spartan existence and the Zhens' opulent lifestyle throws the disconnect between urban and rural China into sharp relief. With its measuring of expectation against reality, What We Were Promised establishes Tan as a new talent with a sharp eye for the intricacies of human relationships. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

  Shelf Talker: Set in Shanghai, Lucy Tan's debut novel follows Wei and Lina Zhen's family crisis over the return of Wei's prodigal brother, who was also Lina's first love.

Word Count