What We Were Promised

From the Publisher:

After years of chasing the American dream, the Zhen family has moved back to China. Settling into a luxurious serviced apartment in Shanghai, Wei, Lina, and their daughter, Karen, join an elite community of Chinese-born, Western-educated professionals who have returned to a radically transformed city.

One morning, in the eighth tower of Lanson Suites, Lina discovers that a treasured ivory bracelet has gone missing. This incident sets off a wave of unease that ripples throughout the Zhen household. Wei, a marketing strategist, bows under the guilt of not having engaged in nobler work. Meanwhile, Lina, lonely in her new life of leisure, assumes the modern moniker taitai-a housewife who does no housework at all. She is haunted by the circumstances surrounding her arranged marriage to Wei and her lingering feelings for his brother, Qiang. Sunny, the family's housekeeper, is a keen but silent observer of these tensions. An unmarried woman trying to carve a place for herself in society, she understands the power of well-kept secrets. When Qiang reappears in Shanghai after decades on the run with a local gang, the family must finally come to terms with the past and its indelible mark on their futures.

From a silk-producing village in rural China, up the corporate ladder in suburban America, and back again to the post-Maoist nouveaux riches of modern Shanghai, What We Were Promised explores the question of what we owe to our country, our families, and ourselves.

My Thoughts:

This is not a YA book, although there is an adolescent character, however, when reading YA books, I often wonder where the adults are? What is going on in their lives that makes them seem so absent? What complexities of emotions plague them? Do they, like teens hold on to what ifs that keep them from focusing on the life they have now? When their own teens seem to intrude or push their way into their consciousness, how do they parent? 

This book starts to answer that by opening up the lives of Wei and Lina Zhen as well as their ayi (like a nanny?) Sunny. Adulting as an expat in this new China, as well as adulting in Shanghai for Sunny and sending most of her money home to her family in the countryside. . .feeling both home and not home, Chinese and not Chinese in this large city. . .the characters seem both rudderless and anchored in the past and old traditions. The prose is simple, the characters are sometimes cold and stoic, but their stories are aching and although I did not really love the characters, I could empathize with their humanity.