Love and Other Moods

by Crystal Z. Lee

Overview

Love and Other Moods is a coming-of-age story set in contemporary China, about falling in love, learning to adult, discovering strength and finding one's place in the world.

Naomi Kita-Fan uproots her life from New York to China when her fiancé's company transfers him to Shanghai. After a disastrous turn of events, Naomi finds herself with no job, no boyfriend, and nowhere to live in a foreign country.

Amidst the backdrop of Shanghai welcoming millions of workers and visitors to the 2010 World Expo, we meet a tapestry of characters through Naomi: Joss Kong, a Shanghai socialite who leads an enviable life, but must harbor the secrets of her husband, Tay Kai Tang. Logan Hayden, a womanizing restaurateur looking for love in all the wrong places. Pan Jinsung and Ouyang Zhangjie, a silver-aged couple struggling with adapting to the ever-changing faces of their city. Dante Ouyang, who had just returned to China after spending years overseas, must choose between being filial and being in love. All their dreams and aspirations interweave within the sprawling web of Shanghai.

This multilayered novel explores a kaleidoscope of shifting relationships --- familial friction, amorous entanglements, volatile friendships --- in one of the most dynamic metropolises of the twenty-first century.

Review Quotes:

"This heartfelt, transporting story sparkles with a constellation of characters who call this city home while pursuing their China dream. As multifaceted as Shanghai itself, this novel follows overlapping narratives about the complexities of adulting, of parenting, of the urban quest for love and finding one's place in the world."

-- EMILY TING, film director of Go Back to China and Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong

"Awash with cosmopolitan expats and jet-setting locals, Love and Other Moods shimmers like the diamonds adorning China's glitterati, while exposing haunting personal histories and intergenerational strife. With dazzling twirls around Shanghai's World Expo, glitzy fashion shows, art deco architecture, jazz clubs, gourmet restaurants, and disappearing food stalls, this novel compellingly pulls the reader into the pleasures and pains of becoming an adult in a city soaring to global status."

-- JENNY LIN, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Critical Studies at the University of Southern California and author of Above sea: Contemporary art, urban culture, and the fashioning of global Shanghai

"Love and Other Moods is about the various kinds of love we experience in life. Lee's poetic words jump off the page and right into your heart. We witness love stories between a woman and a city, sweeping down to those types of familial love like that from a single parent to an adoptive family. Crystal Z. Lee also thrusts you into the anatomy of the colorful, chaotic city and explores all the senses."

-- Reader's Favorites Book Reviews

"A spirited, resonant love story about new loves and new beginnings." -- Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781913891015
Publisher:	Balestier Press
Publication date:	12/10/2020
Pages:	326
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.73(d)

About the Author

Crystal Z. Lee is a Taiwanese American bilingual writer. She has called many places home, including Taipei, New York, Shanghai, and the San Francisco Bay Area. She was formerly a public relations executive who had worked with brands in the fashion, beauty, technology, and automotive industries. 'Love and Other Moods' is her debut novel. You can follow the author on Instagram @ Crystal.Z.Lee

Editorial Reviews

"This entertaining novel of Shanghai, a city with many faces, resonates with its depiction of relationships in the romantic, familial, and business spheres. The story moves between the opulence of high-fashion and the struggle of the working class effortlessly, telling of the beauty, cultural conflicts and constant pressure of living and working in such a city."

-Linda Ulleseit, award-winning author of The Aloha Spirit and Under the Almond Trees

"Love and Other Moods is a boisterous novel where Shanghai is a character in and of itself, and where the city's cornucopia of contradictions come to life. This moving story is about the choices we make, and the journeys we undertake to find love."

-GRACE CHON, award-winning photographer and author of Waggish and Puppy Styled

"This heartfelt, transporting story sparkles with a constellation of characters who call this city home while pursuing their China dream. As multifaceted as Shanghai itself, this novel follows overlapping narratives about the complexities of adulting, of parenting, of the urban quest for love and finding one's place in the world."

-EMILY TING, film director of Go Back to China and Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong

"An engaging snapshot of the lives of modern Chinese transnationals, of which there is now a constituency too large to ignore in English-language fiction."

-WENA POON, award-winning author of Lions in Winter

"Awash with cosmopolitan expats and jet-setting locals, Love and Other Moods shimmers like the diamonds adorning China's glitterati, while exposing haunting personal histories and intergenerational strife. With dazzling twirls around Shanghai's World Expo, glitzy fashion shows, art deco architecture, jazz clubs, gourmet restaurants, and disappearing food stalls, this novel compellingly pulls the reader into the pleasures and pains of becoming an adult in a city soaring to global status."

-JENNY LIN, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Critical Studies at the University of Southern California and author of Above sea: Contemporary art, urban culture, and the fashioning of global Shanghai

"Crystal Z. Lee takes the reader on a dazzling tour of hyper-cosmopolitan Shanghai. Here, the city is not romanticized in the typical manner, but portrayed the way it really is: exciting, loud, dizzying, sexy, sometimes risqué but always authentic. Love and Other Moods expresses the truthful energy of Rising China over the past decade, which those who've been would instantly recognize, and those who haven't will find fascinating. It's one of the most international places in the world, where everyone has a story, and some of those stories are told right here in this novel."

-RAY HECHT, author of South China Morning Blues and Always Goodbye

"An intimate look at contemporary Shanghai and its glittering array of inhabitants as they search for love, fulfill their dreams, and reinvent themselves. This novel explores cultural dissonance, identity crisis, and the question of home. Third-culture kids especially, will find resonance with this story."

-LAURA RAHME, author of The Ming Storytellers, Julien's Terror, and The Mascherari

From the Publisher

2021-01-25
In Lee’s debut novel, a 20-something woman rediscovers love and a sense of herself while visiting a new city.

When Naomi Kita-Fan’s fiance, Seth Ray, was transferred to Shanghai, she excitedly went with him. She gave up her life in New York City to be with the man she loved, but she was only in her new home for a month before she discovered that he’d been unfaithful to her. The engagement was called off, and Naomi now finds herself heartbroken, unemployed, and alone in a foreign country, sleeping on a sofa bed in a hastily rented studio apartment. She can barely speak Mandarin, but she decides to stay in the city anyway—a metropolis that’s full of beauty and excitement and unlike anywhere she’s ever been before. Before long, she’s standing and looking out at the city from a glass-floored platform with a handsome restaurateur, “beguiled with the verticality of towers, with the kaleidoscopic skyline that resembled Tomorrow Land, everything gleaming and shiny and new, promising a future that was limitless.” Later, she meets Dante Ouyang, a Chinese architect who lived abroad in England until recently, and she feels an immediate connection with him. Naomi’s whirlwind affair with Dante, however, may prove as beguiling—and as full of emotion—as her affair with Shanghai itself. Lee’s prose is wonderfully descriptive, equally attuned to the rhythms of her characters and the city: “Naomi felt like wearing her sunglasses on her walk to work this morning, even though there were no sun rays….The sky was a dreary gunmetal hue, the fog of pollution looming ominously, lingering at eye level and in her nostrils.” Naomi is a complex and compelling creation, and the supporting cast members—including her friends Joss and Tay—are all richly detailed. The book effectively marries her youthful self-exploration with the exploration of an urban environment with which many readers may be unfamiliar. The conclusion is satisfying, but readers will likely be left with a profound desire to see the real-life Shanghai.

A spirited, resonant love story about new loves and new beginnings.

Kirkus Reviews