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The End of East: A Novel
 
 
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The End of East: A Novel [Hardcover]

Jen Sookfong Lee (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)


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Book Description

April 29, 2008
In the tradition of Amy Tan and Jhumpa Lahiri, a moving portrait of three generations of family living in Vancouver's Chinatown
 
From Knopf Canada's New Face of Fiction program--launching grounds for Yann Martel's Life of Pi and Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees--comes this powerfully evocative novel.
 
At age eighteen, Seid Quan is the first in the Chan family to emigrate from China to Vancover in 1913. Paving the way for a wife and son, he is profoundly lonely, even as he joins the Chinatown community.
 
Weaving in and out of the past and the present, The End of East pieces together the spellbinding tale of Seid Quan's family: his wife Shew Lin, whose hope for her family are threatened by her own misguided actions; his son Pon Man, who struggles with obligation and desire; his daughter-in-law Siu Sang, who tries to be the caregiver everyone expects, even as she feels herself unraveling; and his granddaughter Sammy, who finds herself embroiled in a volatile mixture of seduction, grief, and duty.
 
An exquisite debut of isolation, immigration, romance, and insanity, The End of East sets family conflicts against the backdrop of Vancouver's Chinatown--a city within a city where dreams are shattered as quickly as they're built, and where history repeats itself through the generations. It is a bold and accomplished debut from one of Canada's brightest new literary stars.


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lee's poignant debut saga covers three generations of a Chinese-Canadian family in Vancouver. Their story begins when Chan Seid Quan emigrates to Vancouver in 1913 at 17, but the novel opens 10 years after his death at the age of 94, when his granddaughter, Samantha, leaves graduate school and a lover in Montreal to return to Vancouver to take care of her mother. Samantha—frozen with indecision about her future and resentful that she's burdened with responsibility she didn't choose—passes her days contemplating her family's past. Polished, nonchronological set pieces offer glimpses of hardship, alienation and despair in Vancouver's Chinatown. Seid Quan returns to China at intervals separated by years, just often enough to marry, father three children and return to Canada after each visit a lonelier man. His youngest child, a son named Pon Man, relocates to Vancouver in 1951 at 15, and eventually marries and has five daughters, the youngest of whom is Samantha. Seid Quan's wife, Shew Lin, survives war and occupation while caring for her three children, and eventually arrives in Vancouver. She's tough, particularly on Pon Man's wife, Siu Sang, who suffers postpartum depression. The present ceaselessly mirrors the past in this enlightening look at Vancouver's slice of the Chinese diaspora. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—Lee traces three generations of a Chinese-Canadian immigrant family in Vancouver, BC. The story is epic in scope, yet intimate in presentation. The first chapter provides a slow start, introducing the family through the eyes of the youngest granddaughter, Sammy, as she reluctantly returns home from Montreal to care for her aging mother. Sammy's memories of her grandfather, Seid Quan, abruptly usher in a retreat to the first decade of the 20th century, when he arrived on a boat from his small village in China. The narrative alternates between past and present, with fleeting appearances of the granddaughter that interrupt the more substantial saga of Seid Quan, then later his son Pon Man, and their march toward the future. Seid Quan toils in a barbershop to earn money to bring his family to Canada, and his Herculean efforts to protect and provide for them distance him emotionally. The story is steeped in descriptions of the streets and alleyways of Vancouver's Chinatown, a community and identity that bind the family together even as they struggle to break free. The intense devotion to family is both a sanctuary and a burden, and the constraints of circumstance drive Sammy's mother to the brink of insanity. The quiet struggles of Sammy's parents and grandparents are engrossing, while the fleeting passages focused on the granddaughter are introspective. As the novel concludes, there is a brief gap where the past and present can meet, echoing the space left open for the future, where Sammy may yet carve out an identity to call her own.—Heidi Dolamore, San Mateo County Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; First Edition edition (April 29, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0312379854
  • ISBN-13: 978-0312379858
  • Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #629,830 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The 256 pages of this novel provide such depths and insight into each character, the lives and toils of a family, and the conflicts that we all face, more or less, at some point within our lives. It's rare for a novel to provoke such contemplation and emotions within the reader, but The End of East manages to do so effortlessly and throughout its entirety. Get the tissues ready, and be prepared to look at your own existence -- I know I did.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Megret
Format:Hardcover
I was unsure of this novel at first, but I enjoyed it more and more as I continued to read. By the end, I found that I was satisfied, and that I had enjoyed the time I spent reading.

The relationships between the characters are bittersweet, shaded with self-sacrifice, family responsibility, cultural divides, misunderstandings, prejudice and ultimately, love. As is life.

It was a quick read- it would be a good book to take along on a trip.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
"It is time," my mother says as she pulls me from the cab, "to run that old-man smell out of my house." Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
sookfong lee, cigarette tin
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Pon Man, Seid Quan, Siu Sang, Shew Lin, Yen Mei, Hong Kong, Min Lai, Stanley Park, Pender Street, Aunt Susie, East Side, English Bay, Pearl River
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Front Cover | First Pages | Surprise Me!
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