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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Heartwarming read, August 17, 2008
This review is from: Off the Menu (Paperback)
Hercules Huang, Whitney Lee and Audrey Henley are best friends since school and they have always relied on each other as only best friends can. They have always been there for each other. Although they have all gone their separate ways - they still meet up regularly and eagerly catch up. While everything appears to be great from the outside, the girls are growing desperately unhappy and feel incapable of sharing this part of their lives with each other, each feels like a failure for not being "happy, happy, happy".
During a "girls weekend" - Hercules, Whitney and Audrey take a chance and decide to really open up about what they are feeling and what they are living, not so surprisingly, the girls discover that they are all running away from something and vow to support each other while they each work towards achieving their true life callings.
Son's novel explores many aspects of human nature - particularly those dealing with relationships with parents, friends and even with ourselves. It is always particularly daunting to challenge a path that appears to have been preset for us and to have the courage to find our own way. Carving one's own way in life is a scary proposition.
This book is all about empowering ourselves - particularly as women - to break out of those "set" patterns and to truly discover what will make us happy. However, this novel is also about the love and support that can be found in true friendship - which these three girls are lucky enough to share. It is heartwarming to read a novel in which there is no horrible jealousy and cattiness and where the women don't spend all of their time destroying each other.
I liked this book and recommend it as a heartwarming, thug to the heartstrings read.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Amazing First Book!, August 5, 2008
This review is from: Off the Menu (Paperback)
Christine Son's novel Off the Menu is the story of three Asian American women who have been best friends since high school and whose lives have taken them in different directions. Whitney Lee is a successful lawyer with a top-notch education, yet she is unhappy with her life and aspires to a career she keeps secret from her family and friends. Hercules Huang owns her own wildly popular restaurant and line of cookware, yet she struggles in her relationship with her impossible-to-please father and deeply desires the thing he's been nagging her about the most: marriage. Audrey Henley is the adopted daughter of Texas billionaires and a schoolteacher whose desire to marry a fellow teacher and become an English professor puts her at odds with her mother. Each woman discovers what she wants in life and learns how to confide in her friends on her journey to a contented existence.
Son's novel examines the complicated relationship between parents and children, honor and success, and the desire to follow one's own dreams measured against the fear of failure. Off the Menu also explores what it means to be an Asian American: assimilation, generational misunderstandings, honoring one's family, racial stereotypes, and claiming a culture one knows little about. Each woman embarks on a complicated quest for her true identity and struggles between balancing her outer persona of success and perfection with her secret desires and fear of failure.
Off the Menu was an amazing first book. It was easy to relate to the characters, who were vivid, complicated, and realistic. The intertwining plot lines were engaging and interesting. I liked the way each woman faced such unique struggles, yet one thing kept them sane: their friendship with one another. I couldn't put the book down. Off the Menu is an absolute must read.
by Jennifer Melville
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Not Worth the Time Really, November 21, 2011
Lots of repetition, lots of interchangeable characters. With the exception of the unlikeable Hercules, the main characters pretty much spoke with the same voice. If the novel was meant to showcase Asian-American women, it failed. The characters could easily have come from any ethnic/cultural background.
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