‘The Wangs vs. the World’ is a charming, comic road-trip story
Following in the tradition of the comic road-trip novel, “The Wangs vs. the World” is jam-packed with misadventures and unplanned excursions as the Wang family crisscrosses the United States in an increasingly crowded vintage station wagon. But that’s where adherence to any sort of literary tradition ends. Jade Chang’s firecracker of a debut knowingly and refreshingly breaks every unwritten rule of the Asian-American family saga, making for a blistering, high-energy read.
From the opening pages, we know Charles Wang isn’t the usual immigrant patriarch. In true Trumpian fashion, he built his cosmetics empire by bending the so-called American dream to his will, flouting regulations and following his greed to a life of Bel-Air mansions and $10,000-perplate charity dinners. His predatory instincts serve him well until the Great Recession of 2008, which puts an abrupt end to his winning streak and leaves him with less than nothing.
After hitting his financial rock-bottom, Charles pulls his youngest, Grace, an aspiring fashion blogger, from boarding school and his wannabe standup-comedian son, Andrew, from college. Against their wishes, he drives them and his icy second wife, Barbra, off to the Catskills, where his oldest, Saina, is in hiding after a glorious flameout made her a pariah of the Manhattan art scene.
The trip gives the family an opportunity to reckon with their new reality, which will no longer include the temperaturecontrolled closets and unlimited Hermès scarves they’re used to; it also gives Charles a chance to dream up his next scheme, which involves returning to China to reclaim the land his ancestors ceded to the communists.
If that sounds like an overloaded premise, it is. Like the Wangs’ car, the novel is stuffed to capacity and prone to random detours, yet its contents always yield interesting surprises. Chang arrives at a rather dark vision of the real American dream — one in which the winners win by trading on illusion rather than substance and are inevitably taken down by a combination of cruel fate and their own unruly egos. The pure quantity of incident and subplot that Chang pelts at you can be disorienting, and a number of her authorial risks don’t pay off. But Chang’s debut swings for the fences, and even when it’s a little too much, it dazzles you with its uniquely American charm and confidence.