The Wangs vs The World

by Jade Chang

'Fresh, energetic, and completely hilarious, The Wangs vs. the World is my favorite debut of the year.' Jami Attenberg, author of Saint Mazie and The Middlesteins


Charles Wang has just lost the cosmetics fortune he built up since emigrating to the US. Gone are the houses, the cars, and the incredible lifestyle. Faced with this loss, he decides to take his family on a trip to China and attempt to reclaim his ancestral lands.

But first they must go on a cross-country journey from their foreclosed Bel-Air home to the Upstate New York retreat of his eldest daughter, Saina. Charles takes his other two children out of schools that he can no longer afford and packs them into the only car that wasn't repossessed-along with their wealth-addicted stepmother, Barbra.

But with his son waylaid by a much-older temptress in New Orleans, his wife ready to defect for a set of 1,000-thread-count sheets, and an epic smash-up in North Carolina, Charles may have to choose between the old world and the new, between keeping his family intact and finally, finally fulfilling his dream of China.

• ISBN10: 0241243483
• ISBN13: 9780241243480
• Publish Date: 3 November 2016 (first published 4 October 2016)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 29 June 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Imprint: Fig Tree
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[ibeforem]

At the heart of The Wangs vs The World is a desperate man. Charles Wang has lost everything, and now he has to tell his family about it. His family — daughters Saina and Grace and son Andrew — has never known a life where they weren’t ridiculously rich. What follows is Charles, his wife Barbra, Grace, and Andrew traveling across the country to stay with oldest daughter Saina, and the ways that each of them deal with their newfound circumstances.

This was a book club pick, and I’m not sure I would have read it otherwise. Something about the description didn’t appeal to me, though I couldn’t tell you what it was now. But, I did read it! And at the end, my reaction was the same as everyone else in my book club…. a resounding “meh?”

I felt a little bit lied to by the buzz ahead of this book. I really didn’t find it that funny! Sure, it had funny parts, but I felt like the dark humor side of it needed to be pushed so much further. The characters are mostly unlikable, so without that humor I couldn’t find many reasons to root for them. Maybe I was expecting more of a farce, and instead I got something a little more depressing.

I wouldn’t not read another book by Jade Chang, but this one wasn’t for me.