Real Americans (Barnes & Noble Book Club Edition)

by Rachel Khong

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Other people's families are always more interesting that our own and we really didn't want to leave Lily and Nick (and the rest of the cast) behind… Grab a friend, this is a family you'll want to talk about.

This Barnes & Noble Book Club Edition features stained and stenciled edges.

From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures?

Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.

Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made? And if we are made, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593802984
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/30/2024
Edition description:	Barnes & Noble Book Club Edition
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	2,804
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

RACHEL KHONG is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction, and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR; O, The Oprah Magazine; Vogue; and Esquire. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Cut, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and Tin House. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District. She lives in California.

Editorial Reviews

A trio of talented narrators immerses listeners in the thorny multigenerational story of a Chinese American family. The audiobook opens in 1999 as 22-year-old Lily, voiced with matter-of-fact directness by Louisa Zhu, meets charismatic, impossibly wealthy Matthew. Despite Lily's initial reservations, largely fueled by Matthew's intimidating family, the two marry and have a son. Later, listeners learn that the son, Nick, has grown up with no knowledge of his father's identity. Eric Yang's measured portrayal of Nick captures his confusion over his perplexing upbringing and growing bitterness as he uncovers long-buried secrets. Eunice Wong closes out the story with her portrayal of Lily's mother, May. Wong channels May's youthful intensity and the regretful understanding that marks her later years. A wholly absorbing family drama. S.A.H. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2024 - AudioFile

Khong masterfully explores a family splintered by science, struggling to redefine their own lives after uncovering harrowing secrets. Real Americans is a mesmerizing multigenerational novel about privilege, identity and the illusions of the American dream.”—Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half

“Real Americans is a grand novel that explores the American psyche, dramatizing the fundamental American belief in the ability to change the world and improve humanity. Rachel Khong shows infinite and colorful perceptions of the world, which are often leavened with wisdom.  Besides being a page turner, this book is also an eye-opener, imaginative and exhilarating.”—Ha Jin, author of Waiting

“Real Americans traverses time with verve and feeling. Khong captures how people can be strange to themselves, how bewilderment can be a site of creation (or change, or becoming).”—Raven Leilani, author of Luster

“Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft, Real Americans flips the multigenerational novel inside out. Fate, honesty, our bargains with life. You will keep turning it over and over in your mind.”—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less Is Lost

“Aglow with love in its many forms, suffused with questions of where—and to whom—we belong, Real Americans is a book of rare charm. Khong untangles the roots of family with a wry, tender attention that will leave readers as comforted as they are challenged.”—C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold and Land of Milk and Honey

“Rachel Khong’s gripping second novel explores how biology, our parents’ abstract hopes for us, sheer luck, and the forces of history itself make us who we are. Real Americans is both a tender story of the intimate relationships between people and a sharp examination of very big questions of ethics, politics, and fate.”—Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

From the Publisher