A Review of Aube Rey Lescure’s River East, River West (William Morrow, 2024)

[lsobiesk]

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn

Edited by Lizzy Sobiesk

Aube Rey Lescure’s River East, River West (William Morrow, 2024) is one of the best debuts I have read in quite a while. This book is filled with messy characters, the kind which you somehow both detest and like at the same time. How Lescure manages to strike this complex balance is the mark of a truly brilliant writer. Let’s let the marketing description give us some background: “Shanghai, 2007: Fourteen-year-old Alva has always longed for more. Raised by her American expat mother, she’s never known her Chinese father, and is certain a better life awaits them in America. But when her mother announces her engagement to their wealthy Chinese landlord, Lu Fang, Alva’s hopes are dashed, and so she plots for the next best thing: the American School in Shanghai. Upon admission, though, Alva is surprised to discover an institution run by an exclusive community of expats and the ever-wilder thrills of a city where foreigners can ostensibly act as they please. 1985: In the seaside city of Qingdao, Lu Fang is a young, married man and a lowly clerk in a shipping yard. Though he once dreamed of a bright future, he is one of many casualties in his country’s harsh political reforms. So when China opens its doors to the first wave of foreigners in decades, Lu Fang’s world is split wide open after he meets an American woman who makes him confront difficult questions about his current status in life, and how much will ever be enough. In a stunning reversal of the east-to-west immigrant narrative and set against China’s political history and economic rise, River East, River West is an intimate family drama and a sharp social novel. Alternating between Alva and Lu Fang’s points of view, this is a profoundly moving exploration of race and class, cultural identity and belonging, and the often-false promise of the American Dream.” 

 

This description is pretty great! I love that it also attends to the main narrative mode, which is the alternation between Alva and Lu Fang in the third person. So, now I turn to my seemingly consistent spoiler warning, so look away now because there is a key connection between these two perspectives, which you don’t understand until you get into Lu Fang’s first section. *Did you look away* If you are still reading, it means you read the book or you just don’t care, so when you get into Lu Fang’s first section, you realize that he’s fallen in love with the woman who will eventually be Alva’s mother, Sloan. You might think that Alva’s father is, in fact, Lu Fang, he is not. The novel is way more complicated and twisted than that. Each section is connected more broadly to Sloan, but they have their own tragic paths. Lu Fang’s involves falling in love with Sloan yet realizing that he cannot seem to break away from his traditional marriage to Ciyi. Eventually, Sloan breaks it off, while Lu Fang becomes a father. Fast forward a number of years and Lu Fang is now a successful businessman. Sloan sees his picture somewhere, and then they meet up again, though each is now with their child. Lu Fang has gone on a business trip with his son Minmin, but the true reason is so he can cross paths with Sloan, who also brings her infant daughter Alva. They rekindle their affair for a brief moment. In Alva’s storyline, she is having a real problem getting used to the marriage of her mother (Sloane) to Lu Fang, who is now her stepfather. Alva sees the marriage as one of convenience, as Lu Fang can provide them with material benefits they were struggling to gain by that point. But Alva doesn’t really know her mom’s history and that’s part of the issue that this novel deals with. Alva finds herself in rebellious teenage years, and this novel is her coming-of-age. There should be a trigger warning for this novel given the way that it ends, but what I appreciate most about this book is how elegantly it imagines the nuances that drive people to make such tricky decisions and how those choices reverberate for many years later. This novel also really turns the immigrant narrative of Asian American literature on its head, with the white woman going to China, so I found that element really fresh and different. Certainly, a book that will find a long reading life from consumers. Looking forward to whatever Lescure produces next!

 

Buy the Book Here