![]() Jimmy has dreams of getting away from his father's legacy and opening a fancier Asian fusion restaurant where he'd never again have to serve the dishes which exhaust and repulse him. The creation of immigrant Bobby Han, the Duck House was once a place where presidents and celebrities dined, but Bobby's death left the restaurant caught between his two sons, the more managerially suited Johnny, and the more impulsive, ambitious Jimmy. The Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland, has certainly seen better days, but it's still a favorite among the community's restaurants. Perhaps those memories were what drew me to Lillian Li's Number One Chinese Restaurant-that, and the fact that Li's book takes place in a suburb of Washington, DC known for its Chinese restaurants. The owner and his wife seemed to have a fascinating relationship, and the high school gossip I was then loved to make up stories about what was going on in their lives, as well as the lives of the other employees. While there were several different Chinese restaurants in our area, and everyone had a favorite, we frequently ate at one particular restaurant, whose owners my parents had known for a number of years. (I used to joke that there were classmates I saw more regularly at the Chinese restaurant than I did in high school!) metro area, she lives in Ann Arbor.Growing up in the New Jersey suburbs in the mid-1980s, my family ate dinner out nearly every Sunday evening, and more often than not, we ate Chinese food, as did many other families in my town. Her work has been published in the New York Times, Granta, Guernica, Glimmer Train, Bon Appetit, and Jezebel. Lillian Li is the author of the novel Number One Chinese Restaurant. When disaster strikes and Pat and Annie find themselves in a dangerous game that means tragedy for the Duck House, their families must finally confront the conflicts and loyalties simmering beneath the red and gold lanterns. Nan and Ah-Jack, longtime Duck House employees, yearn to turn their thirty-year friendship into something more, while Nan’s son, Pat, struggles to stay out of trouble. ![]() Jimmy’s older brother, Johnny, is more concerned with restoring the dignity of the family name than his faltering relationship with his own teenage daughter, Annie. Owner Jimmy Han has ambitions for a new high-end fusion place, hoping to eclipse his late father’s homely establishment. The popular Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland has been serving devoted regulars for decades, but behind the staff’s professional smiles simmer tensions, heartaches and grudges from decades of bustling restaurant life. RELATED: Review: The Diary of a Bookseller - Shaun Bythell About Number One Chinese Restaurant With scheming brothers, underhand Uncle Pang, and long-suffering mother and badly behaved children to contend with, there’s barely a quiet moment at this Rockville restaurant.Ī pacy, plot-driven tale about familial ties, loyalty and resentment, all the while underpinned with a dark humour and simmering tension that bubbles to the surface, it’s easy to see why the smart and steadfast Number One Chinese Restaurant is a surefire contender for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. One of the book’s biggest selling points for me was its rich cast of colourful characters, all of whom grow and evolve throughout the story. Nan’s seventeen year old son, Pat, has recently been expelled from school so now works a lowly job at the restaurant, while Ah-Jack’s wife is in the late stages of cancer with mounting medical bills. A long-running restaurant beloved by many, two of its key employees, Nan and Ah-Jack, continue to work despite their advancing years as they struggle to support their dependents. Managed by brothers Kimmy and Johnny Han, who inherited it from their late father Bobby. ![]() Published to wide critical acclaim from the likes of Book Riot, Publisher’s Weekly and The Financial Times, Number One Chinese Restaurant is a memorable debut from this American author, set within the Chinese immigrant community of Maryland and centred around popular eatery, The Duck House restaurant. And so, while the first of the books I read from the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction long-list was a writer I already knew the second was one I’d not yet come across. One of the joys of reading literary prize lists – other than the excuse to carve out even more time that usual for books – is the reading of authors you might otherwise not have come across.
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