Wangs Vs. the World (Chang) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Jade Chang delivers a rollicking, off-beat, on-target illustration of culture clash and the American dream turned on its head. With a tight cast of characters, Chang offers a sympathetic look at the plight of one family struggling through the 2008 recession. We watch its members fumble, often hilariously, through a rocky adjustment to their new status—from the haves to the have-nots. READ MORE.
Cara Kless - LitLovers


A riches-to-rags story, an immigrant story and a quixotic road trip are bundled into Jade Chang's sharply funny first novel…This novel is overstuffed with subplots and detours, but Charles…makes the ride worthwhile, as does the author's savage takedown of the American dream.
Carmela Ciuraru - New York Times


Jade Chang is unendingly clever in her generous debut novel about the comedy of racial identity. If there is a stereotype that Asian-Americans kids are quiet, unpopular and studious, that their parents are strict disciplinarians (think Tiger Mom), then Chang has conjured up the Wangs to prove otherwise…. As much as The Wangs vs. the World is about Asian-American identity, it is also a sprawling family adventure compressed into a road trip novel. The result is a manic, consistently funny book of alternating perspectives as the Wangs make various cross-country stopovers in their '80s station wagon…. To be a first- or second-generation immigrant means wrestling with the reality that no place is ever truly home. In Chang's compassionate and bright-eyed novel, she proves that struggling with that identity can at least be funny and strange, especially when you struggle together with family.
Kevin Nguyen - New York Times Book Review


With mischievous, Dickensian glee, Chang’s prose power-drives the appealingly dysfunctional family, now a disgrace to the wet dream of capitalism, through their postfall paces.... Chang’s confident, broad-stroke, and go-for-broke style makes her fresh twist on the American immigrant saga of the woebegone Wangs one of 2016’s must-reads.... You will laugh your ass off while learning a thing or two about buying into, and then having to bail on, the American dream. But mostly, you’ll get to savor, thanks to a wildly innovative plot twist, the I Chang of this diabolical dramedy: how it’s love, not money, that really makes the world, and all the people in it, go round.
Lisa Shea - Elle


One of the best debut novels of 2016, this warmhearted, wide-ranging novel tells the wholly modern story of the Wang family: Father Charles has had his fortune decimated by the financial crisis, so he wants to corral his family, return to China, and start all over. But first, everyone—Charles, his wife, and their three children—has to sort out the tangles of their lives.
Estelle Tang - Elle


It all comes crashing down for Charles Wang, so he and his family hit the road. This endearing debut is more fun than you’d expect from a trip with this backdrop.
Marie Claire


[Chang's] book is unrelentingly fun, but it's also raw and profane—a story of fierce pride, fierce anger, and even fiercer love.... The Wangs vs. the World drives home the fact that there is no one immigrant experience—just humanity in all its glorious, sloppy complexity, doing its best to survive and thrive despite the whims of society and circumstance. With plenty of laughs, both bitter and sweet, along the way.
NPR.org


(Starred review.) [S]parkling...a family whose fortune has been lost in the 2008 financial crisis takes a cross-country road trip in an effort to regroup.... Various small crises...keep the plot percolating. Chang’s charming and quirky characters and comic observations make the novel a jaunty joy ride to remember.
Publishers Weekly


When Charles Wang's cosmetics empire comes crashing down...[he] leaves California on a road trip to upstate New York with his second wife and otherwise engaged younger children.... Incidents along the way make Charles understand that he must choose between past and family.
Library Journal


[R]eaders with a taste for outsize family dysfunction, a la Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s The Nest (2016) and Emma Straub’s The Vacationers (2014), will whip through this one with smiles on their faces.
Booklist


A Chinese-American family tumbles from riches to rags in Chang’s jam-packed, high-energy debut.... [T]his debut novelist holds nothing back. Head-spinning fun with many fine moments—but the emotional aspects of the book are weakened by the barrage effect.
Kirkus Reviews