Our book group met last week for our traditional December meeting Book Group Christmas Curry, and in between popadoms and mains we managed to discuss this month’s book.
White Ivy is the debut novel of Chinese-American author Yang, and she surely uses her own history of being born in China and moving to the USA as a child to inform her narrator, Ivy’s story. However, while White Ivy may share elements of the immigrant experience and fitting in, finding an identity and so on, it is also a novel about obsession and has a psychological edge that leads to a shocking conclusion as various secrets are exposed, combining all this into a coming of age novel that morphs into a dark romance.
When Ivy’s parents emigrated to pursue the American Dream, Ivy was left behind with her grandmother Meifeng. Life was hard and she learned how to steal. Later, once Ivy and Meifeng are able to join them in the USA, she soon feels a complete disconnect from her parents, having no idea what they’ve been doing to establish themselves there, and similarly they don’t understand her having effectively been brought up by Meifeng. Her grandmother was our favourite character, wily, and full of her own brand of wisdom – as when she tells Ivy how marriage works – that her father wasn’t her mother’s true love – but an expedient choice.
“It’s what I’ve always told you. One successful marriage can feed three generations.” Even a tragic love story, filtered through Meifeng’s eyes, boiled down to food and money.
Meanwhile, at High School, Ivy rather falls for Gabriel, handsome and from a rich family. She wangles her way into a sleepover at his home, telling her parents she’ll be with her friend, the only other Asian girl in the year. She manages to get close to Gabriel for a talk and cuddle, but is caught out by her parents the next morning. When they turn up to take her away angrily, they are met with complete manners and politeness by Gabriel’s folks. Ivy’s punishment is to be sent back to China for the summer – taking the flights that her mother would have used. There, staying with different parts of their family, she experiences both sides of the new China. Her aunt, who picks her up from the airport, is Westernised, lives a rich life of luxury, has a chauffeur and buys Ivy a new wardrobe. At the end of the month Ivy is dreading moving on to the other arm of her family who live in near poverty, and she has to share a bed with her cousin, but surprisingly the girls bond and Ivy is sad to leave in a way, having seen both sides.
It’s a few years later that Ivy encounters Gabriel again. This time she goes all out to snare him, and snare him she does, even though she is an outsider, an immigrant, and will be marrying-up. There’s something about Gabriel that is different too, he’s such a gentle soul. Ivy’s only other real friend is Roux Roman, a Romanian immigrant, a bit of a scallywag. When they met as teenagers Roux was the only one to know about her thieving; there’s an attraction too. Their paths will cross again later.
Meanwhile there are many layers of secrets and lies to be uncovered as the preparations for Ivy and Gabriel’s wedding get underway, and that’s where I’ll leave it.
We all thought the author handled the immigrant experience as well as we’d hoped, also exploiting the differences between the three generations to the plot’s advantage. Some of us worked out some of the secrets to be revealed; I got the main one, but didn’t see the final denouement coming at all.
As a book group choice, this had plenty to discuss. It was well-written and an enjoyable read, if ultimately a novel that won’t stay too long in the memory.
Source: Own copy. Wildfire hardback 2020, 354 pages. BUY at Blackwell’s or Amazon UK via my affiliate links
