“No matter how close I got to Charlotte, she would always see me as I used to be. Vision is an impression of the past.” (p. 9). Kindle Edition.
There’s much going on in this novel that has been short-listed for the PEN/Faulkner award. The narrator, Matt Kim, is searching for his identity and trying to move on after dealing with his parents dying when he was a child, having adoptive parents, getting married, having a child of his own, and getting divorced. He is learning to navigate his new life and maintain a healthy relationship with his daughter Charlotte, who now lives with Jennifer, his ex-wife, and her lover, a detective. He has a girlfriend, Sandra, whose doppelganger is named Yumi.
Matt is Asian American and believes he is invisible or disappearing. Some of his themes relate to the discrimination and bias experienced by Asian Americans. Other themes result from “adulting” and learning to cope with life’s challenges. Rather than trying to summarize the plot that involves living situations, career issues, and many complicated relationship topics, following are some of the notes I made while reading that relate to the real-life problems the author explores via Matt Kim and his doppelganger, Matt Chung:
-Walls and boundaries are probably invisible places inside of us.
-Because of difficulties coping, do we all seemingly disappear from relationships, jobs and parenting, and other responsibilities?
-Do Asian Americans and other targeted groups split into another to survive American culture? Sacrifice their true identities?
-Do the characters in the book have doubles or doppelgängers because they cannot be themselves?
-Does the main character have to leave part of himself behind so he can move on?
-Do we all have a desire not to feel when faced with setbacks in life?
-The duality of living between cultures affects self and identity.
-Being an adoptee presents a unique set of challenges, much more so when adoptive parents are culturally different—racially, religiously, and essentially in every way.
– Asian stereotypes and bias are manifested when Asians are
—–mistaken for each other
—–asked if they speak English
—–all assumed to be Chinese
—–ignored and “looked past”
Matthew Salesses creates complex characters who convey so much about human connections, and they do it with humor in such a thought-provoking manner.
