Alamak! Richie Rich goes Asian.
I thought only Indians were obsessed with big fat weddings. Funny coincidence – I picked up Crazy Rich Asians, CRA hereon, when Priyanka Chopra was getting married to Nick Jonas in a madly written about wedding ceremony and was perusing its concluding chapters when the Indian biz tycoon Mukesh Ambani’s daughter Isha Ambani’s wedding was the talk of the globe. Well, geographically so, we’re Asians too so these weddings count.
Anyway, pardon an Indian reader for not really grasping the sheer allure of the story. CRA is something we see all around us. Snobbery, prejudices, cruelty in the name of traditions, backbiting, jealousy, clannish behaviour that often takes on mob proportions and motivations, insensitivity towards an outsider, marriage as a contract-merger, it’s all tame fare. Like eating samosas on the street. Like hot weather all year round. Like turning on the radio and finding Bollywood on every station. Like stardom and Shah Rukh Khan. There’s absolutely no surprise factor there.
In India at least, you don’t have to be a CRA in order to experience all that. Kevin Kwan’s CRA was that tame, if you ask me.
Rachel Chu is invited by her CRA BF Nick (Nicholas) Young to his friend Colin Khoo’s wedding to the super rich model Araminta Lee. Rachel finds a friend-sympathiser in Astrid, Nick’s cousin, whose marriage – filthy rich girl married good-looking not that rich boy – is in trouble. Rachel is judged harshly by Nick’s mother and grandmother and that’s a typical Indian saas-bahu tale right there. I won’t tell you how it ends.
All of this is pretty standard Asian fare – much like finding dimsums on an Asian menu. It’s just that the women are dressed in labels we don’t much hear about in the Western media.
Is it great writing that made this book a bestseller? I don’t think so. I don’t think it up to even Gone Girl standards… I think the only reason is that CRA has great timing.
It glides in very well when the Chinese clout is on a meteoric rise, especially in the West, particularly so in America. And Canada, if that counts as well. The book itself is a breezy read. Don’t expect cultural insights unless you’re the 25th-or something richest human on the planet… and then if you are, you certainly wouldn’t care how the book describes the way of life of this tribe you belong to.
I’m not and even then all I can say is, nothing to see here. Human frailty and failing is unchanged by the amount in the bank account. That’s probably the only thing to care about here.
Will I read the other 2 books in this series? Perhaps I will. It’s at best a Roman Du Gare genre for me and as such, a breezy read.
Fun quotes I can relate to as an Indian and Crazy but absolutely not rich Asian:
“Twenty ways you can tell you have Asian parents. Number one on the list: Your parents never, ever call you “just to say hello”.”
Um. And that’s all.