The Beijing Duck House is a well known local establishment beloved by its aging clientele and loyal waitstaff. When disaster strikes, it forces everyone with a connection to the restaurant to face the conflicts that have been simmering for years and decide for once where loyalty begins and ends.

Li writes an interesting and emotionally complex multi-generational story that looks deep into the culture of an Asian American family and the conflicts that have ruled their lives as they strive to achieve the American dream promised to them so many years ago. Told from three points of view, we watch as this large family bound by blood and friendship cope with the upheaval caused by one of their own. Darkly humorous and honest, Li showcases her characters in a bright light, taking no pains to cover their flaws as she guides readers through a turbulent sea of family dysfunction, melodrama, parental manipulation, and child rebellion. A little dry and verbose at times, the overall story engaged and I look forward to seeing what Li comes up with next.
Grade: C+

Collected and constructed families, assimilation, personal fulfillment and struggles between family obligation, friendships and finding your own path: all combine in this story to present a story that brings forward the primary issue of personal happiness to the forefront. Told in multiple perspectives, there are several characters whose stories unfold, leading us to a climax that will press everyone to take a side, the story is a slow to develop read that ultimately paints a solid picture of the people and personalities at the Beijing Duck House in Rockville, a once hugely popular dining spot.

Jimmy Han and his brother Johnny are now the owners of the restaurant after their father’s death: but while Johnny travels frequently and yearns for the days when his father was alive and his responsibilities were not resulting in the tension between he and his brother, Jimmy has stayed behind to run the show. Called ‘The Little Boss’ by the staff, most having been at their jobs since the restaurant opened thirty years earlier, he’s always wanted more. He didn’t want to be in the restaurant business, but here he is, taking staffing direction from his absent brother while hoping and planning for his own dream of an upscale fusion restaurant that doesn’t just have the old standards on the menu- with one big exception, duck. He wants no duck at all in his new place. But funds are short, yet Uncle Pang has offered to ‘help’ him –the sort of help that should have him running in the other direction.

Feeling saddled with responsibilities and no say, as Johnny reinstated Nan to a hostess position, overseeing his all-too-Americanized daughter Annie, and Ah-Jack, the elderly waiter who’s health and physical deterioration have him better suited for retirement, if not for the constant protection and coddling he gets from Nan. There are other staff that hold their resentments like shields into battle, taking great pleasure in Nan’s discomfiture with her son Pat, now a dishwasher with a surly attitude since being expelled from school. They are friends, “if one defined friendship as the natural occurrence between people who, after colliding for decades, have finally eroded enough to fit together.", with all of the secrets, experiences and attitudes that come from it. But a tragedy could mean the end of the restaurant and dreams for many, if this diverse group, so similar in their ways, cannot find new ways to redefine their lives.

None of these characters is completely good or bad- sure Jimmy is a bit selfish and whiny, and Johnny is a runner – desperate to have a better relationship with his daughter Annie, but afraid to reach out to her. The teens, Annie and Pat are typical teens – cocksure and confident while making all the worst choices in their efforts to distance themselves from their parents, without really feeling as if they have a place among their American friends or their Chinese families. There’s Nan, Pat’s mother, spending all of her hours working and giving to others – from providing special treats and feeling as though she didn’t do enough for Pat, to worrying about her long-term connection and friendship with Ah-Jack – a married man who is untethered and always looking for validation- flirting and playing on Nan’s affection for him. Oh the personalities and interior dialogues are golden here – with wonderful description and frequently brilliant phrases that bring a sense of a person to light. Li has created a rich atmosphere, rife with challenges interior and exterior, to give us a sense of each person’s struggle for their own place in the world, even when things go hugely off-script. A lovely debut, certain to please those who prefer a slower pace and plenty of input that fills the story with perspectives that clash, combine and complement one another along the way.

I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via NetGalley for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.

Review first appeared at <a href=” https://wp.me/p3OmRo-9VB /”> <a> I am, Indeed </a>

Interesting in terms of the immigrant experience and cultures (both Chinese and the restaurant world).

Early in this novel there’s a description of the heavily overdone decor of the Chinese restaurant in question, and the writing of the book would seem to match. While,the story and the characters’ plights have some interest, the heavyhanded style- hearts are constantly seized, whatever that means, and two adjectives are used wherever one would suffice - make the reading a chore. It’s a shame since the core material is relatively fresh.

A behind the scenes look at the physical and mental demands placed on owners and workers at the Beijing Duck House coupled with the infighting among the many participants makes for an interesting read. This debut novel is liberally peppered with an odd assortment of characters, some you like an others not so much. Some are loyal and dedicated like long time manager Nan while others like the brothers Johnny and Jimmy are constantly at odds, a situation compounded by their mother Feng Fei. This is essentially a family business so the children of various employees are also involved in the business. Then there is Uncle Pang, a “what about me” kind of guy who comes across as a “Mafioso” and whose machinations affect all in his purview.

While this is supposed to be a dark comedy of sorts, for this reader, it was a sad yet enlightening tale of sabotage, resentment and ultimately family and love. 3 1/2 stars

The characters of Number One Chinese Restaurant all inhabit a planet orbiting the Beijing Duck House. A fire at the suburban Washington, D.C restaurant upends the equilibrium and tensions between family and coworkers come to the surface.  

At the center of the novel by Lillian LI are two brothers with different philosophies of life and what it means to be restaurateurs. Thrown into the mix are long-serving restaurant staff and a mobster “uncle" who seems to be pulling strings behind the scenes.

Unfortunately Number One Chinese Restaurant (Digital galley, Henry Holt & Co.) is a book dominated by subplots. The family tensions make for interesting stories, but without a gripping, dominant plot line it was unfortunately not a compelling read.

Vivid characters and a surprising element of suspense make for a nuanced debut. Look forward to seeing more fromLillian Li. Most enjoyable, like a good meal,

This was an interesting one. This book was on my radar after I read about it on the millions 2018 list. It's a book I would normally not choose for myself, however i'm glad I did. Li weaves together a family drama that is interesting, relatable and at times darkly funny.

The novel follows the Han family and their quest to have the best Chinese restaurant. Jimmy, the hard drinking, tough living brother dreams of making his restaurant the most exclusive hotspot in the city while his brother Johnny, the more reserved brother, just wants to keep his late fathers restaurant alive. As much as this is a tale of brother vs. brother, it's also a tale of an immigrant community. Their lives are forever intertwined due to shared heritage, culture and livelihood. They do their best to take care of their own. Infighting, nefarious investors, arson and family dynamics make this a decidedly fun read.

I really liked the way the author related to each of her characters. I’ve read too many books recently where I felt the author disdained the people he was writing about, and Li wrote each of her diverse characters with respect. And there were a lot of characters to keep track of. This book is a feast of relationships, wildly varying upbringings and expectations clashing in unexpected ways.

Lillian Li's debut novel chronicles the lives of the characters from a past-storied Chinese restaurant, the Duck House, in suburban Maryland.

Johnny and Jimmy are the Chinese-born, American-raised sons of the now-deceased original owner, with two different plans for the restaurant they are now tasked with. Nan is the longtime manager, preoccupied with her friendship with Ah-Jack, an elderly waiter, and issues with her only son, Pat. Ah-Jack struggles with his relationship with his wife compared to his friendship with Nan, while Pat enters a concerning fling with Annie, the daughter of Johnny. Behind the scenes, the brother's mother, Feng Fei, and their father's old family friend, Uncle Pang, factor into the growing discord. When disaster strikes at the restaurant, the bonds of friendship and loyalty within the group are tested.

The story is told through alternating perspectives of the main characters, bringing forward the history of the group and how the present-day problems have arisen. The older generation of Feng Fei, Nan, and Ah-Jack hold to the old world ideals, especially of loyalty, while the younger, namely Jimmy, Annie, and Pat have grasped the American dream. The conflict between the two worlds fuels the turmoil between the characters and affects their reactions to each situation, as their loyalty to each other is called into question.

Li has written a compelling debut novel, with interesting characters and a story that keeps the reader invested, in a clever contemporary fiction/literature book. I would recommend it for fans of the traditional family saga, as well as those who enjoy reading about the cultural and generational differences in newly American families. I look forward to reading more from Li.

This one left me wanting more but not in the way I hoped. Li's prose is well-written and the pacing gleefully pushes the reader into the next scene, making it difficult to put down. There's plenty of great tension in wondering what the characters will do next and in seeing them through each other's eyes. However, there were two issues at the end of my reading that I couldn't look past.

The first was that the multiple point of views detracted from the story more than helped. Much of the book feels as though you are reading a lot of separate stories that do not fit together with any kind of cohesion. This makes it difficult to understand the timing of the plot, and how long it has been since you've last been in that particular character's mind. Each of the separate stories have moments of bright enjoyment but their lack of togetherness leaves the end of the story a bit wanting in my opinion.

The second issue, for me, was how very unlikeable the characters are. Don't get me wrong; I love a good unlikeable character but there needs to be at least one small spot of possible redemption or likability. This was missing for the most of the characters though. Nan was the best example of balance between likability and dislikability and therefore she is the character I connected with the most. The other characters were difficult to find redeeming features within which made it difficult for me to empathize and to root for them.

I liked it well enough for its great pacing and tension but the heavy dislikability of the characters and the lack of cohesion of the multi-POV made it difficult for me to find more that I liked.


Note: I received a free Kindle edition of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher Henry Holt & Company, and the author Lillian Li for the opportunity to do so.

Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li is a well written novel about a group of people connected by a Chinese restaurant and how they're all affected in the aftermath of a tragedy that befell it. From Johnny, the unlikable owner/manager of the restaurant, to Nan and Ah-Jack, who have worked at the restaurant the longest, to Nan's son, who is entwined with the tragedy, the narrative alternates between various shifting viewpoints, giving you a story of very real humans and how they affect each other's lives in ways known and unknown.

What I enjoyed about this book was getting all of the different viewpoints, and how authentic each one seemed to be. Not all of the characters were likable, but most were understandable, and some were very surprising once you actually got to see things their way. While you know the basics of the tragedy from the get go, the narrative still managed to unfold in ways that surprised me and made me want to keep reading. From Nan and Ah-Jack's unfolding romance (not a spoiler--I swear it's in the blurb) to Johnny's attempts to move on with his life, I rooted for some characters and applauded the downfall of others. I felt like the various characters were very real and the book itself felt realistic.

At times, the book dragged a little bit for me, and there are some characters I would've preferred to hear less from, and others I would've liked to hear more from. It was very easy to shift my loyalties throughout, but at a certain point, the book did speed up and I became very curious to see what happened to everyone. If you're looking for a good fiction read with some darkness and tragedy in it, as well as really well-drawn characters, then be sure to give this one a try.

Note: I received this book from Netgalley & the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This was an interesting look at the workings of a Chinese restaurant and the family behind it. The book is well--written and while the story is interesting at times, it also seems to lag somewhat. Perhaps that is due to having so many characters. I felt some of the characters had stories that were incomplete.

The descriptions of food made me hungry and the humor made me laugh. A worthwhile debut novel.

I loved Lillian Li's debut novel Number One Chinese Restaurant.! Li was able to introduce you to the characters in a way that left you feeling as if you really knew them.and caused you to.cared deeply for their well being. The novel which followed a mostly serious route did have a chance to exhibit almost every possible emotion, Li even managed to interject little bits of humor through out. Number One Chinese Restaurant
also gave you an interesting glimce of Chinese culture and the restaurant environment. I would recommend this novel to almost anyone as I am sure they would definitely find many appealing elements within its covers

A story I wanted to like more than I did. As a first gen ABC, a lot of the story resonated with me and my own experience with my parents. However, some parts were just melodromatic with characters that were difficult to "get". That may have been a result of the shifting perspectives and some of the characters were perhaps given the short end of the stick at times.

I would recommend this for people who like dysfunctional families, completely unlikable characters. and over the top drama. But it just wasn't a book that I particularly took to.

I could sooo relate to this story! And not because I, or my family, owned a restaurant! But I know of quite a few families who have owned them over the years. I remember some great ones started by grandparents, whose children took them over very successfully, only to be killed by the grandchildren wanting to do something new, something more trendy! Of course, backbiting, feuding and fighting ensued and the restaurants closed- sadly. I think anyone who has ever had them happen to then should read this book. Maybe the restaurant kids should, too! I enjoyed this story!

This sounded quite interesting from the blurb, but the actual book turned out to be a real disappointment, the main problem being that there was no one to root for and the story wasn't particularly interesting. I made it to halfway through with an ever-increasing drumbeat telling me that I could be reading something else - something that intrigued, or engaged, or fulfilled, or delighted me. This novel did none of those things. The characters were unlikeable, with no redeeming virtues. They were not even deliciously evil - just mean-spirited, argumentative, unsavory and uninteresting. I had no compelling reason to read on at all.

The writing itself wasn't awful, but there were oddities in it here and there, such as when I read “not even the vein in her forehead seemed to pulse.” There really isn't a vein in the forehead that might pulse noticeably. There are veins between the eyebrows, but these are usually rather hidden by the musculature. The only place around the forehead where you might normally see a vein pulsing would be at the temples where there are noticeable veins and the skin is thin enough to see them pulse, but this 'throbbing vein' motif is overdone in books these days, even for calling attention to its absence.

At another point I read, “He could not discern if she was beautiful. He knew her too well” Once again we have the emphasis on beauty, and put there by a female writer, like if a woman doesn't have that, she has nothing. Why do women do this to themselves? Are we really so shallow? This especially doesn't work in this context, because a person who has feelings for someone, even of "mere" friendship, would more than likely see them as more appealing than others did, even to their looks, so this writing was doubly problematical. Fortunately most of the book was not like that. Unfortunately, it was not well-written for other reasons, most notably, that it was a huge tell with little show, and it felt like I was being lectured to a lot of the time.

There were large paragraphs of telling us of people's feelings and actions, and those felt heavy and sluggish. They made for unattractive reading. Worse than this though were the endless flashbacks. I am not a fan of flashbacks at all; they bring a story to a screeching halt, and all moment and compulsion on the part of the reader is lost. I took to skipping these rather quickly, but it was hard to do so because it was hard to tell where a flashback was starting, so this was annoying.

The plot is about a bunch of old farts who have grown old together in a Chinese restaurant. Where the 'number one' came in I have no idea unless there was a reveal in the second half of the novel. There was no allusion to it in the first half that I saw. I had to wonder if it was an attempt to borrow some cachet from Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency which I read and was not impressed with either. But anyway, these employees ought to constitute some sort of a family, and as such, family members might argue and not always get along, but it was way overdone here and left a sorry taste in the mouth. I did not want to read a whole novel about these people, especially given that the plot wasn't really very interesting either.

I wish this author all the best in her career, but I cannot recommend this novel as a worthy read unless you want to have that dangerous mutant vein pulse in your forehead until it bursts!

Haven’t most of us been to that Chinese restaurant that is a bit rundown, over-decorated with lots of red and gold, over-decorated, over-crowded, with too many food choices, and too many tables? It’s always busy because the food is plentiful, inexpensive, and delicious. Well, that is the Beijing Duck House, the Number One Chinese Restaurant in Lillian Li’s debut novel.

Jimmy Han has worked most of his nearly forty years at the restaurant. It’s his father’s restaurant and he grew up there along with his younger brother Johnny. It’s a mixed legacy because Jimmy is embarrassed by the restaurant’s cultural touchstones such as the duck door handle, by the overflowing menu of stereotypical dishes. He longs for a chic restaurant with fusion foods, artfully arranged in an elegant decor. His restaurant dreams seem a dream of assimilation to me.

Number One Chinese Restaurant focuses on several relationships. There is the hot and heavy romance with Jimmy and Janine, his realtor. There are the complex familial relationships between Jimmy and his brother Johnny, the conflicts with their mother, and the resentment of their late father. Then there are the hostess Nan and the waiter Ah-Jack whose thirty-year friendship is shifting toward romance. Add Johnny’s daughter Annie and Nan’s son Pat whose romance is fractured by the mistakes of a night of drinking and temptation. Add a menacing fixer “Uncle” Pang and it gets terribly complex.



Sometimes I feel like I should like a book more than I do. Number One Chinese Restaurant is a good book, interesting and fast-paced. However, it would be a stronger book if we were allowed to figure some stuff out for ourselves. Since the narrative follows several people, we get a play-by-play of their thoughts and motives. I don’t think “show, don’t tell” has to be an absolute rule, but if you’re going to tell, don’t tell everything from everyone. It makes reading so passive.

Nonetheless, there’s some humor and lots of love and humanity in the story making it well worth reading.

I received a copy of Number One Chinese Restaurant from the publisher through NetGalley

Number One Chinese Restaurant at Henry Holt & Co. | US Macmillan
Lillian Li author site

My Review of “Number One Chinese Restaurant” by Lillian Li, Henry Holt and Co. June 2018

“Number One Chinese Restaurant” by Lillian Li is an enjoyable and entertaining read. The Genres for this novel are Fiction and Women’s Fiction. I appreciate that the author uses dark humor and some interesting descriptions of the cast of characters, traditional restaurant atmosphere and food. The Beijing Duck House in Maryland, is where we are introduced to many of the characters. The timeline of the story is mostly in the present and goes to the past only when necessary to explain the characters or events. When a tragedy occurs, there are major events that unfold.

The author describes the characters as complex , complicated and dysfunctional. This is a story of multi-generational family and other characters. We see that both the young characters and the aged characters, each have their own sets of problems, and at times seem worlds apart. Within the family, there are secrets, jealousy, betrayals and lack of communication.

I would recommend this intriguing novel to those readers that enjoy reading about family dynamics, and family business.

BROOKE’S REVIEW

Lillian Li’s recent release, Number One Chinese Restaurant, is a darkly comic novel that explores the layers of relationships between family members as they run their restaurant in a DC suburb - The Beijing Duck House. First- and second-generation Chinese Americans come together as a family and explore themes of the immigrant experience and the pursuit of the American dream. This novel clocks in at 300 humorous pages and should be on many summer reading lists.

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PRAISE

“Lillian Li is a brilliant young writer and someone to watch. Her work understands human secrets generally as well as secret places both in the world and in the mind; her narratives are complex, mysterious, moving, and surprising.”- Lorrie Moore

AUTHOR

Lillian Li received her BA from Princeton and her MFA from the University of Michigan. She is the recipient of a Hopwood Award in Short Fiction, as well as Glimmer Train’s New Writer Award. Her work has been featured in Guernica, Granta, and Jezebel. She is from the D.C. metro area and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt and Co. for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.