Brief “Reviews” (Really brief!) of “The Family Chao,” Why Didn’t You Tell Me?,” and “Lucy by the Sea”

Here I very briefly review three excellent books I have recently read. First is “The Family Chao” (W. W. Norton, 2022), by Lan Samantha Chang, a crowded, dense novel overflowing with family matters, intrigue, and even a possible murder. It is both serious and funny. Its focus on the family Chinese restaurant brings in cultural issues, but most of all, its focus is how families do or don’t work, and the complexities of that question. The next book, “Why Didn’t You Tell Me?” (Crown, 2022) is also much concerned with cultural issues, but in this case the book is a memoir. The author, Carmen Rita Wong, writes of her family of black and Latina women, as well as her immigrant father, “Papi” Wong, and her white American stepfather. There are complicated blended families, and underneath it all, family secrets which the author sensed, but didn’t find out until much later, thus the source of the title. This is a rich, compelling, moving narrative. The third book is Elizabeth Strout’s latest, “Lucy by the Sea” (Random House, 2022). I am a great admirer of her fiction, and was so happy to read this novel, especially as it features one of her earlier characters from her other novels, Lucy Barton. In this novel, which takes place during the COVID pandemic, Lucy’s ex-husband William takes her (whose second husband has recently died) away from Manhattan (which, as we remember, in the early months of the pandemic was overwhelmed with illness and death) to a small town in Maine to protect her from the virus as much as possible. The two – Lucy and William – are still friends and still care deeply about each other, despite the pain they suffered during the time of their separation and divorce. Other characters in the story are the couple’s children, neighbors, and friends. The story is both set in the large frame of a significant and traumatic time, and focuses on the close-up intimacies of family, connections, day-to-day living, and reflections on what is really important in the characters’ lives. I personally love this kind of close-up, quiet detailing of “ordinary” (although in the midst of extraordinary) life. A beautifully written novel. I will always read everything that Elizabeth Strout writes.