Free Food for Millionaires | Min Jin Lee | Delivers on it's promise to entertain

Free Food for Millionaires | Min Jin Lee | A great story . . up to a point

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Free Food for Mill...

	Free Food for Millionaires Min Jin Lee Grand Central Publishing, 2008 - 592 pages average customer review:based on 50 reviews view larger image
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"Competence can be a curse." So begins Min Jin Lee's epic novel about class, society, and identity. Casey Han's four years at Princeton have given her many things: "a refined diction, an enviable golf handicap, a popular white boyfriend, an agnostic's closeted passion for reading the Bible, and a magna cum laude degree in economics. But no job and a number of bad habits."
Casey's parents, who live in Queens, are Korean immigrants working in a dry cleaner, desperately trying to hold onto their culture and identity. Their daughter, on the other hand, has entered into the upper echelon of rarified American society via scholarships. But after graduation, Casey's trust-fund friends see only opportunity and choices while Casey sees the reality of having expensive habits without the means to sustain them. As Casey navigates Manhattan, we see her life and the lives of those around her: her sheltered mother, scarred father, her friend Ella who's always been the good Korean girl, Ella's ambitious Korean husband and his Caucasian mistress, Casey's white fiancé, and then her Korean boyfriend, all culminating in a portrait of New York City and its world of haves and have-nots.
FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES offers up a fresh exploration of the complex layers we inhabit both in society and within ourselves. Inspired by 19th century novels such as Vanity Fair and Middlemarch, Min Jin Lee examines maintaining identity within changing communities. This is a remarkably assured debut from a writer to watch.

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Delivers on it's promise to entertain

I don't know a single Korean woman. This matters. The only thing I know of Korean American culture is bound in the 600+ pages of this book.

I love that the author gave us a bit of everyone. The protagonist is completely unlikeable and deeply flawed. In any other book I would say that this is the problem with the book but here I liked it, loved it even.

This book is 5 stars of entertainment. I found the story to be totally engrossing and the characters were painfully familiar to the characters in my own life. Min Jin Lee's voice is amazing. I think I'd enjoy her telling of Aesop's Fables. This book is proof for me that the journey is as important as the destination.

This was a part of our book club reading and with all the different women represented I'm sure that the discussion this month will be very interesting.

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A great story . . up to a point

I enjoyed this book very much. I couldn't wait to get back to it to see what would happen to Casey next (parts I-II). By the time it got to part III, though, it seemed to spin a little out of control; seemed a little disjointed from the rest of the story. But all in all I would recommend this as a very engrossing book, with very interesting characters.

Mixed feelings...

I have to admit, I'm torn over this book. Having just finished it about twenty minutes ago, I both hated and enjoyed it. The ending felt not like an ending at all, but at the same time it was sort of optimistically unresolved. Perhaps my ambivalence is a sign in and of itself.

I picked the book up because the description of the "protagonist" Casey reminded me of a dear friend. Well, the resemblance turned out to be weak, but I found myself engaged by these characters (despite their -- MAJOR -- flaws) so I kept going. (I put "protagonist" in quotes because there was a huge cast of characters, all of whose minds we enter, and many of whom we spend an equal amount of time with as Casey, so it was sort of hard to unclear who we were rooting for.)

Also, coming from an Asian background, I found the insight into the Korean community very interesting and not dissimilar to that of the Chinese/Taiwanese one I experienced.

For some reason, the length of the book didn't hit me until I was about 100 pages in and I realized that very little had actually happened. The most exciting things occur in the first 30 or so pages, and then it's just sort of one event after another. I felt like I was on a rollercoaster -- but one that didn't have very high ups or downs or go very fast -- it just kept moving, and since I was already on it, I went along.

I did find a handful of "gems" to underline, but in a 600 page book, I guess that's not much as I would have liked.

Most of all, I found the interactions between the characters to be flat. They were TOLD well, I suppose, but never really shown. (Ex. the author told me of Casey's love for Sabine, but I never really saw it.) Much of the dialogue was also stilted, meaning it sounded like it would be delivered by soap opera actors instead of Hollywood's A-list.

I think that is this book's biggest flaw: the quality/style of writing does not live up (or hold up) to this ambitious of a story.

I read somewhere (on her Web site, maybe?) that the author intentionally wrote in this style, never settling on one character's perspective or voice, in an attempt to imitate the style of 19th century European authors. I guess I don't think that was wholly successful -- but at the same time, it didn't fail so horribly as to make me stop.

And finally, there is very little happiness sprinkled throughout the pages. My view of the world is not generally dim, so that was a bit strange for me.

In spite of ALL that, I finished, and I'm glad I did. I wanted to know how these people ended up. I don't think I'd necessarily recommend this book to anyone, but I wouldn't urge anyone to NOT read it either.

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