There are two ways to respond to a family legacy. One way is to try and carry on whatever one’s progenitors created. The other way is to strike out on one’s own to create something new. In Number One Chinese Restaurant, by Lillian Li, Jimmy Han finds a third way: to try and create a new restaurant that will leave the old family Duck House in the dust only to land smack in the middle of possibly irreparable problems. This novel follows Jimmy and a few of the employees of the Duck House at a moment of dynastic crisis, as they face questions about what they want to be and what they want to leave behind.
Number One Chinese Restaurant begins and ends with a conversation between Jimmy and Uncle Pang, a man who is not an actual member of the Han family. Pang, however, is a connected man and those connections have made it possible for the family to create the Duck House when they came from northern China to Maryland. Jimmy plans to open a new restaurant, one that won’t serve cheap Peking duck and Americanized Chinese food. He wants to go upmarket. He also wants to leave Uncle Pang’s favors behind. Unfortunately for Jimmy, Pang is not a man to let a lucrative venture go without a fight. Hours after Jimmy hands over what he thinks is his last payment to Pang, Pang hires a young ne’er do well waiter to burn the Duck House to the ground.
Jimmy trades places as narrator with Ah-Jack and Nan, employees who should’ve retired years ago, and Pat, the budding arsonist. Ah-Jack is a diabetic waiter who is still serving tables because his wife has terminal cancer. Nan has been in love with Ah-Jack for years, so she frets about him as much as she does her son, Pat. Each chapter of Number One Chinese Restaurant shows this handful of characters sinking into problems that they can’t see solutions for. Should Pat turn himself in, will he take down his girlfriend (Jimmy’s niece) with him if he does? Will Ah-Jack and Nan find a way to be together? Will Jimmy’s new venture succeed or go down in metaphorical flames the way the Duck House succumbed to real ones?
These questions sounds like good fodder for an interesting book. There are parts that made for good reading. My problem is that I wasn’t invested in any of the characters—except maybe Ah-Jack, because his problems didn’t come from hubris or a thwarted sense of entitlement. While I can deal with unlikeable characters (as long as I can understand why they’re unlikeable), I have a hard time with characters I just don’t care about. Still, readers who like books that take the quotidian and raise the stakes so that it feels like actual kingdoms are at stake might enjoy Number One Chinese Restaurant.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. It will be released 19 June 2018.