I've been conflicted as to whether or not I wanted to read this book for years. To some degree I like Dallas/Dynasty trashy rich people fighting stuff AT TIMES as long as it's fake (ain't watching no "Real Housewives" anything), and then sometimes I roll my eyes at the obnoxious shallowness, and I couldn't tell from flipping through the front of it which one this was going to be. So I was debating on whether or not I wanted this one from the library. Then the movie came out, I loved it and saw it three times, and last I checked 34 other people have holds on that book at the library. Which is how I somehow oops, ended up with the audiobook from the library, which only has five people in line after me. In CD, no less. Do you know how effing hard it is to listen to CDs any more outside of my old car? That's eleven disks of unabridged I have to get done in three weeks and I can't listen to it at work and trying to listen off my CD burner makes you lose your place somehow. Then I started listening to it on the car during my weekend trips, but discs 2 and 4 are hell scratched, and...shyeah. So part of this was consumed by audiobook and part of this was just straight up reading the book in a bookstore. Pardon me if my comprehension and recollections aren't the best
Anyway: my vote is the movie is better because it cuts a LOT of the cruft out of the book. There's a lot of cruft in this and it takes the slow route to the plot because the author certainly loves to describe the snobbiness and vapid conversations of rich people and what they bought in Singapore and how much they look down on people from the wrong families and the wrong countries without the right lineage. I know very little about Kevin Kwan but apparently he hasn't been back to Singapore since he was eleven and can never return or else he'll be conscripted into the army. So you gotta give him points for imagination as to how things are going there now, I guess.
The plot of the book is that Rachel Chu, a Chinese-born, American-raised girl, has been raised at various places around the country while her mother worked her way up from restaurant worker, put herself through college and became a real estate agent. Rachel's gone to Good Schools and is now an economics professor at NYU. That's where she met the hunky Singaporean Nick Young, a history professor. They've been dating for about two years when Nick asks Rachel to spend the summer with him in Asia and attend his best friend Colin Khoo's wedding. What she doesn't know is that Nick comes from some ancient family with ancient huge wealth--"crazy rich" is less about anyone's sanity than it's about "so rich it's crazy that anyone can be that rich." And Nick, who's been living the life of a normal plebe professor, does not warn Rachel about any of this until she's on a fancier plane to Singapore than she was expecting, and as time goes on she is more and more shocked at the environment Nick grew up in.
For the record: in the movie everyone's heard of the Youngs and the Internet exists. In this book, somehow the Youngs have managed to keep quiet in the world and their money isn't an open thing, which means that Peik Lin and her dad have to do some investigating to find out who the hell are these people. I don't know how plausible that is (the book's set in time a little earlier, but not THAT earlier) to do in real life, but you have to notice that somehow Nick's grandma's house can't be found on Google Earth.
Why didn't Nick tell her? Well, to some degree he got raised to not talk about his family and their money, he really has no idea how much anyone has because the family is secretive, and I think he just didn't want to ruin Rachel's perception of him. She went for him, not his family or his money. Rachel mentions how she always got judged by Asian guys in America and the more we get to know the Singaporean girls Nick grew up with, you get that the two of them really like each other's NOT judging of each other. But...the story of this is how Nick's family is putting a buzzkill on their love.
People you will meet:
- Ah Ma, Nick's superrich grandma, who seems friendly at first but hoo boy, can she turn on you.
- Eleanor Young, Nick's mother, who in the book ducks meeting Rachel for as long as she can while she gets a private investigator to investigate her--finding out things Rachel herself had no idea about. Naturally she is fairly polite in public and not happy in private.
- Phillip Young, Nick's dad, who is totally fine with Rachel and spends most of his time in Australia avoiding the family. Smart man.
- Colin Khoo, Nick's best friend/the groom. Nice dude, loves his fiancee but has obvious depression issues.
- Araminta Lee, Colin's fiancee, very nice most of the time but has some brattier/shallow aspects later on that made me sad.
- Alastair Cheng, Nick's cousin who just got engaged to...
- Kitty Pong, trashy dumb actress and the real gold digger around here.
- Edison "Eddie" Cheng, Alastair's super fucking bratty asshole cousin who is constantly throwing fits about not having enough money, bitching out his wife for her wardrobe, and screaming at his children.
- Fiona Tung, Eddie's wife, who deserves better than this turd.
- Bernard Tai, the most obnoxious little shit in the world who throws the world's most obnoxious bachelor party, which is so obnoxious you can't put it in a movie.
- Astrid Leong, Nick's favorite cousin who everyone loves (beautiful, superrich, super fashionable, super nice too!), but has just found out her husband's cheating on her and is trying to figure out how to manage the situation.
- Michael Teo, Astrid's husband, who may or may not be cheating but he definitely Has Issues about being the poor husband Big Time--they're a parallel/possible future bad omen to Nick and Rachel.
- Peik Lin Goh, Rachel's best friend from undergrad, a nouveau riche girl living in Singapore, awesome and on Rachel's side.
- The rest of the Goh family, who are also very nice and on Rachel's side and do their best to protect Rachel and investigate the situation with Nick. (Note: much less ridiculous than in the movie. and her brother isn't a creeper.)
- Oliver T'sien, a rogueish cousin who's on Rachel's side from the getgo and gives her all the dish.
- Charlie Wu, Astrid's ex-fiance, who comes in at the end of the book but is a super kind helpful person to Astrid. He still loves her (note: he's separated from his wife) but just wants her to be happy and will do what is needed to help with that..
- Sophie Khoo, Colin's sister/Astrid's cousin, is a doctor and the one that comes to Rachel's rescue in a bad moment.
- Francesca, the requisite head Mean Girl who gets up to the mean shit that was given to Amanda in the movie. Why is she acting like that? Bitches be bitches, I guess.
- Amanda, Nick's ex who was prominent in the movie but isn't in this book very much and makes a bit of a weaksauce attempt at some shit.
So Rachel and Nick arrive in Singapore and at first it's all happy hangouts with Colin and Araminta and Peik Lin--and then once Rachel sees Ah Ma's Tyersall Park estate, she and Peik Lin are all ohhhhhhhhhhshiiiiiiiiiiiit. And when Rachel goes along to Araminta's bachelorette party, most of the girls except for Sophie are complete bitches to her once they find out that no, she's not one of the Taipei Plastics Chus. Meanwhile, Nick, Colin, Alastair and another friend of theirs are miserable at the bachelor party Bernard (whose dad is the biggest minority shareholder in Colin's dad's business and Colin has to be nice to him) throws, which involves dog fights and hiring all the ladies in a brothel. To get off the boat, they seriously have Colin fake a bout of pancreatitis--or just alcohol poisoning--to get a helicopter to get the fuck out of there. It's pretty funny and I'm a little disappointed that wasn't in the movie.
As time goes on and the wedding goes on, Nick realizes that yes, he wants to propose to Rachel. And dear lord, HIS FAMILY AIN'T ABOUT TO HAVE THAT, so they drop their little investigation bomb on Rachel and rock her world. And not only is Rachel wondering about her own past, now she's debating whether or not she can even marry into a family that doesn't want her. Which you can't help but compare to Astrid's problems with Michael never fitting in with her family either. Will they survive? Nick will do his best to make sure they do...
The ending's a bit different from the movie--it's a little less resolved--but overall I was good with it. And I managed to score a free copy of book 2, so hopefully I can read that more easily.
Overall, I like the nicer characters--Rachel and Nick, Astrid, Peik Lin and her family, Rachel's mom, Colin, Sophie--and you definitely have big hate on for Bernard and Eddie. And the plot, when you get to it, is good. But you do need to wade through a lot of very shallow talk about say, whether or not it's socially acceptable for Eddie to borrow his rich friend's jet three times in a row, or how much it costs to be a rich person and to keep up your wardrobe, or the various scorning of where you come from and why it's not quite good enough and blah blah blah...So in short, this book is a total mix of what I enjoy about rich people soaps and what I'm not interested in in rich people soaps. So overall, I give it three stars. Reading the book is optional, but that movie did it great. Movie gets four stars.
Comments