Primeros reseñadoresJean Kwok

“Like all most compelling mysteries, Jean Kwok’s Searching for Sylvie Lee has a powerful emotional drama at its heart. A twisting tale of love, loss and dark family secrets.” —Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train and Into the Water A poignant and suspenseful drama that untangles the complicated ties binding three women—two sisters and their mother—in one Chinese immigrant family and explores what happens when the eldest daughter disappears, and a series of family secrets emerge, from the New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Translation It begins with a mystery. Sylvie, the beautiful, brilliant, successful older daughter of the Lee family, flies to the Netherlands for one final visit with her dying grandmother—and then vanishes. Amy, the sheltered baby of the Lee family, is too young to remember a time when her parents were newly immigrated and too poor to keep Sylvie. Seven years older, Sylvie was raised by a distant relative in a faraway, foreign place, and didn’t rejoin her family in America until age nine. Timid and shy, Amy has always looked up to her sister, the fierce and fearless protector who showered her with unconditional love. But what happened to Sylvie? Amy and her parents are distraught and desperate for answers. Sylvie has always looked out for them. Now, it’s Amy’s turn to help. Terrified yet determined, Amy retraces her sister’s movements, flying to the last place Sylvie was seen. But instead of simple answers, she discovers something much more valuable: the truth. Sylvie, the golden girl, kept painful secrets . . . secrets that will reveal more about Amy’s complicated family—and herself—than she ever could have imagined. A deeply moving story of family, secrets, identity, and longing, Searching for Sylvie Lee is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive portrait of an immigrant family. It is a profound exploration of the many ways culture and language can divide us and the impossibility of ever truly knowing someone—especially those we love.

Twenty-two-year-old Charlie Wong grew up in NY’s Chinatown, the older daughter of a Beijing ballerina and noodle maker. Though an ABC (America-born Chinese), Charlie’s entire world has always been limited to Chinatown. Now grown, she lives in the same, tiny Chinatown apartment with her old- world, widower father and her 12-year-old sister, and works – miserably -- as a dishwasher at the restaurant that employs her father. But when offered a job as receptionist at a ballroom dance studio in midtown Manhattan, Charlie gains access to a world she hardly knew existed, and everything she once took to be certain turns upside down. Slowly, within this new world, shy, clumsy, unfashionable Charlie’s own natural dance talents begin to emerge, and gradually her perspective, her expectations, and her sense of self all are transformed– something she must hide, at great pains, from her father and his suspicion of all things Western. As Charlie blossoms, though, her sister becomes chronically ill, as if one sister’s rise must directly cause the other’s decline. As Pa insists on treating his ailing child exclusively with Eastern practices (which do not seem to be helping), Charlie is forced to find a way to reconcile her two selves and her two worlds –Eastern and Western, old world and new -- to rescue her sister while also preserving herself.

“A moving coming of age story, reminiscent of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Kwok perfectly captures the voice and perspective of a young immigrant, and the result is a powerful work about love, sacrifice and faith.” —Min Jin Lee, author of the bestselling Free Food for Millionaires Girl in Translation is an inspiring debut about a young immigrant in America, a smart girl who, living a double life between school and sweatshop, understands that her family’s future is in her hands. Eleven-year-old Kimberly Chang emigrates from Hong Kong to Brooklyn with her mother, hoping to find a better life. Her mother is immediately overwhelmed by the demands of her new city, and the two find themselves living in squalor and working in a sweatshop. Exiled by language, estranged by a new culture, Kim feels she must support her family using her natural smarts and talent to excel in school. As she navigates between languages and worlds—school and sweatshop, inquisitive teenager and dutiful daughter, privilege and poverty—she learns to selectively show different parts of herself depending on whom she’s with. She fights for dignity, acceptance, and survival, earning herself a place at a prestigious New York private school and eventually a spot at Yale, but the personal choices she has made along the way – including falling deeply in love with a Chinese factory boy who ties her to the world she would like to move beyond – threaten to derail everything she has worked so hard to achieve. Ultimately, Kim must make an unfathomable sacrifice in order to ensure the success of her family. In Girl in Translation, Jean Kwok spins a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.