Book Review: “The Fortunes of Jaded Women” by Carolyn Huynh
Family Curse
There have been times when I have certainly felt as though I have been cursed. Let’s just say that I suffer from some issues that affect my brain chemistry, and there are days when I wish that this cognitive imbalance could be removed from me. Yes, I wish there is a cure for what I have (and I don’t want to go into any detail about the maladies I face). However, there are other days when I realize that this curse might just very well be a blessing in disguise. After all, perhaps the reason that you’re reading these words may just be a result of the mental conditions that I suffer from. I’ve heard it said — and I don’t want to get too high in praise on myself here — that I have some talent when it comes to being a writer (and, I am hopeful, a book reviewer). This is a long way of saying that the next book up for review consideration on Medium is a novel by debut author Carolyn Huynh that looks at curses and blessings as they affect a Vietnamese family. It’s a sometimes disarmingly hilarious read, and would probably be best appreciated by those who thought Crazy Rich Asians was a laugh riot.
The Fortunes of Jaded Women looks at generations of Vietnamese Americans living in Orange County, California. (And, yes, there are some references to oranges in the book.) The family in question has been plagued with a curse by a witch many years before the present-day setting of the novel after one woman seethed anger at the fact that her daughter-in-law was cheating on her husband with another man. The angry woman asks the witch to ensure that the successive descendants of the adulterous woman be cursed by giving birth to daughters only and not sons for the remainder of eternity. Flash forward to today, and one of these descendants has decided to visit a psychic in Hawaii to see her future. The psychic tells her that her family will see a funeral, a wedding, and a pregnancy all within the space of the coming year and that this woman will need to be reconciled with her two sisters within the same year or risk losing everything she has. (So, yes, you can make any allusions to this novel being an Asian version of Four Weddings and a Funeral if you want.) As the saying goes, much hilarity ensues, with the requisite dollops of heartbreak and tenderness.
The Fortunes of Jaded Women is a breezy read and is quite enjoyable. The humour is less laugh-out-loud funny and more touching in some ways. I’m guessing that women readers and particularly Asian women readers will see bits of themselves in this book, which should make this read meaningful for them. Essentially, this is a novel that is fun — even if it may hit certain painful emotional buttons for readers. Huynh shows that she is a deft wordsmith, which is particularly astonishing as this is her first book. Why is this astonishing? This novel feels as though it has been written by a seasoned writer who knows what she’s doing. For instance, what might be striking to readers is how Huynh looks at potentially controversial topics such as interracial marriage and pregnancy out of wedlock. Even though The Fortunes of Jaded Women is a bit of a fluffy read — the sort of thing that you might want to take to read on the beach or beside a swimming pool — there is some serious topicality here. Huynh shows with this work that she means business and I hope she’s a writer that sticks around and writes more books of this nature.
That’s not to say that The Fortunes of Jaded Women is not with a flaw or two. Readers may find keeping track of the characters a bit confusing because there are at least twelve major characters in this novel, and that’s not counting minor characters that pop up from time to time that you will need to keep track of. To be charitable, Huynh does do an admirable job of dropping clues into the narrative to help the reader sort out who’s who. (For instance, one character carries a fake Louis Vuitton handbag with her, and Huynh goes to great pains to constantly reference this as a mental reminder for the reader.) Still, the book may be challenging for some because there are so many characters here that it could be easy to lose track of each one if you’re not paying close attention. There’s a related concern with this aspect of the book as well — some of the characters are interesting, but because Huynh is doing a bit of juggling between characters in a novel that is less than 300 pages long, some of these characters don’t get enough so-called screen time. For instance, there’s a woman in the book who is trying to win the affection of a man in Hong Kong. However, just when things seem to start getting interesting with this narrative thread, the scene then shifts to another main female character; we never do truly find out what happened to this budding relationship. Or so it seemed.
Still, readers will be touched by this heartwarming read. The Fortunes of Jaded Women goes to show that you can have arguments with your family and bicker from time to time, but, at the end of the day, love will win people over. This may not be a ground-breaking novel, per se, yet it is an important one — not only for the messages of kindness and hospitality that it embodies but also for the fact that this is a novel stuffed to the gills with remarkable Asian women. (It probably doesn’t need to be said that books featuring such characters have been seemingly few and hard to come by until recently.) Overall, The Fortunes of Jaded Women is a novel that you can enjoy killing some time with. It doesn’t purport to be anything else than a very good, engaging novel that’s fairly easy to like. For a novel about curses, I am sure that its author is going to be rewarded with new fans who will gobble it up. And, perhaps, it made me feel a little bit better about being a person who is cursed with a terrible burden. For that, I am grateful.
Carolyn Huynh’s The Fortunes of Jaded Women was published by Simon & Shuster / Atria Books on September 6, 2022.
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