When I say that I am looking for an easy read, it does not mean that I can easily tolerate a read which is not good written or has a captivating story. I don´t always understand myself though how come that I keep reading until the very end a bad book...
I enjoyed previous books by Kevin Kwan - although not equally - for more than the literary reason. I am interested in representation of non-white, minorities in literary realm therefore I was following several directions in the book.
Sex and Vanity is following a slightly different path: mixed families - Asian and European - in America, their struggle to play the white card and their fantastic alliances into big WASP-ish families and their familiarities with royal highnesses from all over the world. There is a kind of accepted craziness of the characters´ and their everyday life, including the puppy yoga (a yoga session in a room filled with puppies. ´They´ll be frolicking ariund your mat and licking you in the face while you´re in downward dog´. Great, it seems there were so many things that changed since I visited America the last time that I don´t regret for not getting to know).
First, we meet Lucie Churchill - mother of Asian origin, father from that Churchill family - who´s flirting at a high-class wedding in Capri with a cute guy, George, from a rich - but just rich - Asian family with houses all over the world and a mother with no fashion sense, yet a generous person. A couple of years later, Lucie is about to get married with an outrageously rich social media obsessed guy. She meets George again randomly and she starts to have doubts about her feelings towards her fiancé.
The story is not bad, and I´ve read more than one kind of story, but didn´t like the writing at all. The developments of different part of the stories are just not matching up together, the dialogues are bland and very boring - I mean, nothing against talking about jewellery or nice dresses, but do it with style, not like a vilain with a close to minus IQ - the characters are not developed. There are also some anti-semitic references about the ´visitors´ and there is a character, a ´Prussian Jew´ Mordecai who is a ´von´ and ridiculous. No idea what such appearances were really necessary.
Overall, not the kind of book I was expecting to spend my late Saturday evening with.
Rating: 2 stars
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