Christine Son

Three Asian-American over-achieving women are brought up short by the need to balance family expectations with their own desires. They call themselves the Valedictorians, because they all graduated with the exact same GPA from their exclusive private high school. Now in their late 20s they continue to be best friends. Whitney Lee is an attorney at one of the prestige law firms in Houston, but really wants to be a singer. Audrey Henley, adopted as an infant into a billionaire’s family, is working furiously to finish her Ph.D. with the dream of teaching at a university. Hercules Huang is a fantastic chef with a growing restaurant empire, but also has an elderly father who does nothing but criticize her and, despite being in America for over 2 decades, still speaks only Chinese.

Son had a fairly good premise for this, her debut novel. But she failed in its execution. The characters and situations are racial stereotypes – so much so, that some of the scenarios were just embarrassing to read (e.g. the chef goes to two different Mexican restaurants, and gets food poisoning at both). The dialogue is juvenile and totally lame. The women are immature and superficial, behaving as if they are still in junior high not professional women near 30. For example:
She walked over to the chosen equipment, and when she saw the price tag, she was overjoyed. They were the most expensive items in the store, and she took the steep cost as a sure sign that they were meant for her boyfriend.

I never really cared at all what happened to any of them, I just wanted them to get on with it so the book would end. If I didn’t have to read it for a challenge I would have abandoned it by page 30.
… (altro)

Literary scholars may debate the definition of “chick lit,” but Off the Menu falls firmly in the genre no matter how tightly or loosely it’s defined. Three Asian-American women struggle with their parents’ expectations and try to follow their dreams.

Christine Son writes in a light, breezy style. The focus of each chapter rotates among the women. Whitney is a lawyer in a corporate firm, but yearns to be a singer. Audrey is the adopted daughter of Houston socialites and wants nothing more than to be a literature professor. Hercules named herself after a favorite anime character in her native China, not realizing it was a masculine name in the U.S. She’s a successful chef, planning to open a second restaurant while dealing with her Chinese father’s refusal to adopt American habits or learn English.

Hercules is the only one of the three who stands out. Whitney and Audrey are all but interchangeable. While Whitney struggles to come to terms with her Korean parents’ opinions of how adult children should behave and prosper, Audrey struggles to come to terms with her socialite parents’ opinions of who adult children should marry. What makes Hercules stand out is the unlikeability with which she’s portrayed for most of the book. She screams at her staff and her father as if to prove that she is capable of making it on her own terms. The character softens toward the end of the book, but that serves to dull her edges and make her no clearer of a character than WhitneyAudrey.

The Asian heritage of all of the characters comes into play, usually in how they relate with their parents. However, the characters could almost be of any ethnic or economic class. The reader spends the most time with the characters when they’re together, apart from their families and in innocuous settings.

The most memorable character in the novel is Jimmy, a struggling artist Audrey encounters in a coffee shop. After Jimmy’s relationship fell apart, his partner refused to move out of their house. His legal troubles allow Audrey to bring him into Whitney’s orbit, and a road trip to Austin introduces him to Hercules. The scenes with Jimmy leap off the page, and readers may find themselves wishing Son had developed a novel around him rather than the three women.… (altro)

Whitney, Audrey and Hercules are three Asian women from Houston, TX. They have been friends since high school, where they were each the co-valedictorians of their graduating class. Although they have different goals and dreams for their lives, they meet once a month at Hercules’ restaurant to discuss their lives and achievements. The Valedictorians are about ready to enter their 30s and are all outwardly successful. Inside, they each have anxieties about their lives and their futures that they do not share with each other for fear of what they each might think. Independently, each of the women is bright, but they are sinking without the help of their best friends. They learn that their troubles are best shared and resolved together.

Off the Menu is an interesting look at how three different women who share a similar race can be impacted by that in context of their family and of their country in very different ways. Whitney is the youngest child of a traditional Korean family. While clearly loved by her parents, the emphasis is on education and professional success. Whitney is an up and coming attorney at a prestigious law firm, but what she really wants to do is take a shot at becoming a singer/songwriter. She hides her weekend gigs from her friends and family for fear of how they will react. This secret eventually becomes part of the distance growing in her relationship with her parent-approved Korean boyfriend. Hercules is from a Chinese family. Her mother died when she was 12, leaving her to be raised by her father, a man who never gets over the loss of his wife. Hercules, whose given name is Xiao-Xiao, can never please her father, despite her success as a chef and restaurateur. She constantly struggles dealing with her father’s refusal to assimilate into American culture, with his ailing health, and taking care of his personal financial matters. Audrey was adopted by her billionaire parents from Korea when she was two months old. Her adoptive family is Irish and it is that cultural identity she thinks of first when asked. She often thinks of herself as white because of her surroundings. While her family paints a perfect picture for the rest of the world, family life is not so very pleasant. Her parents, though married, are little more than strangers to each other.

Of all the characters, Hercules was my favorite. I wouldn’t have expected this at the beginning, though. At first I found her to be off-putting. Some of her very first words were f*ck and motherf*cker. Those happen to be my favorite cuss words, but they were like a slap in the face coming right out of the blue. After I got to know her better, I understood that her near constant foul language maintained the walls she built around herself. My reaction to her is just what she would have wanted from any stranger. It instantly moved her behind her wall, keeping me at a distance. She didn’t allow her friends to get much closer, either. When her relationship with her father come to a head at the same time as an eagerly awaited business venture with a college friend, she could no longer shut Whitney and Audrey out. It was a treat to watch her start to blossom from within her darkest moments.

This novel was not at all what I had anticipated. Where I was expecting chick lit about friendship with an Asian twist, I found thoughtful commentary on what it means to be a daughter, a friend, a lover, successful, an American, and a minority. I enjoyed getting to know the characters and learning from their experiences. This would make a perfect book for reading groups and dear friends.

http://literatehousewife.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/125-off-the-menu-review-and-co...… (altro)

Initially I was really excited to read Off the Menu, then while reading the first chapter I wondered what I had gotten myself into, but from then on I was forever captivated. Off the Menu is a deep and satisfying read that was really hard to put down! I thought that I would have to try to work myself into a positive mood to enjoy the book, but it was so much better than that! I love Christine Son's writing, it is endearing, gentle and beautiful. She picks up and leaves off in each chapter with another one of the three valedictorian friends Hercules, Audrey and Whitney that have known each other since high school, and I found myself along for the whole thing. Once I hopped on, Christine did not ever disappoint.

I figured that Off the Menu would be a feminine book about being in love or finding love or something of the sort. I am a stickler for covers, sorry. I it really seems to put Off the Menu under a stereotype that I don't think it belongs in. It is so much more than a romance/ women's novel! It is filled with relationships, endurance, and high expectations placed by the oneself, or the parents, it is so much more than the cover would suggest.So beware that if you have avoided this book because of the cover...you are really missing out.

I will steer clear of generalizations, but the most of the Asian students and youth that I have known growing up do really have to battle between what the expectations their parents place on them, and their own fulfilled or unfulfilled dreams. Even in junior high in Korea kids get up ever earlier than school starts to go to tutoring, and then from that to school, from school they go to a different tutor. I had a roommate in high school that told me that she would get home at 11 pm from studying and then have to be there at 5 am again! I don't know about you, but my junior high days were no where near that complicated. Yes, I know that Americans do have expectations for their children as well, and that is obvious to me too, but not in the same way, to the level of intensity that I have seen it in the Asian and Asian American families that I know. The stakes somehow seem higher, like impossibility is expected, and respect for their parents wishes is the norm (where here it is certainly not). I enjoyed the character portrayals of the different types of women, and how they coped with these pressures in life, the busyness, the side jobs or side dreams, the reality that they were getting old and needed to marry. Each character was equally enticing to me, however I did enjoy Hercules the most but that was because somehow I related to her more than to anyone else.

I am in awe of Christine Son because Off the Menu was so much more than I had ever expected. I really enjoyed all of it (except somehow the first chapter??) and I would recommend it, highly. So it gets my funky award: The Happy Chicken :) enjoy!… (altro)