Number One Chinese Restaurant: A Novel

by Lillian Li Narrated by Nancy Wu

Overview

From Lillian Li comes an exuberant and wise multigenerational debut audiobook about the complicated lives and loves of people working in everyone's favorite Chinese restaurant.

The Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland, is not only a beloved go-to setting for hunger pangs and celebrations; it is its own world, inhabited by waiters and kitchen staff who have been fighting, loving, and aging within its walls for decades. When disaster strikes, this working family's controlled chaos is set loose, forcing each character to confront the conflicts that fast-paced restaurant life has kept at bay.

Owner Jimmy Han hopes to leave his late father's homespun establishment for a fancier one. Jimmy's older brother, Johnny, and Johnny's daughter, Annie, ache to return to a time before a father's absence and a teenager's silence pushed them apart. Nan and Ah-Jack, longtime Duck House employees, are tempted to turn their thirty-year friendship into something else, even as Nan's son, Pat, struggles to stay out of trouble. And when Pat and Annie, caught in a mix of youthful lust and boredom, find themselves in a dangerous game that implicates them in the Duck House tragedy, their families must decide how much they are willing to sacrifice to help their children.

Generous in spirit, unaffected in its intelligence, multi-voiced, poignant, and darkly funny, Number One Chinese Restaurant looks beyond red tablecloths and silkscreen murals to share an unforgettable story about youth and aging, parents and children, and all the ways that our families destroy us while also keeping us grounded and alive.

Editorial Reviews

JULY 2018 - AudioFile

Narrator Nancy Wu’s careful pacing allows listeners to absorb the multiple layers of this story about how the Han family and the staff at their successful Chinese restaurant try to balance work and their personal lives, familial duty, and dreams. On one level, the novel exposes the sometimes insurmountable gap between immigrant and American-born generations, especially in areas like work ethic and visions of the future. Another layer of the story examines the characters’ personal issues, including divorce, addiction, aging, and parenting. By varying her cadence and volume, Wu differentiates inner turmoil from public drama. Furthermore, her respectful Chinese-American accent—subtle for the younger characters and stronger for the older ones—adds depth to the listening experience. C.B.L. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

04/02/2018
With echoes of Stewart O’Nan’s Last Night at the Lobster, Li’s insightful debut takes readers behind the scenes of a Chinese restaurant, the Beijing Duck House, in Rockville, Md. Jimmy Han, son of the restaurant’s deceased original owner, runs the business but is trying to sell it to transition to a more upscale venue, the Beijing Glory, an Asian fusion restaurant on the Georgetown waterfront. Jimmy and his older brother, Johnny, have had a running argument about the direction of the Duck House—Johnny wants the restaurant to remain traditional—since the death of their father. Their manager, Nan, and Ah-Jack, a waiter, have been friends for 30 years but lately have become romantically involved. Meanwhile, Nan’s troubled 17-year-old son, Pat, a dishwasher, and Johnny’s disaffected daughter, Annie, a hostess, have been having not-so-secret sex in the storage closet. And hovering over all of them is Uncle Pang, a mysterious, nine-fingered godfather who might hold the key to their futures. Despite the novel’s leisurely plotting, Li vividly depicts the lives of her characters and gives the narrative a few satisfying turns, resulting in a memorable debut. (June)

From the Publisher

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, Real Simple, Bustle, and The Wall Street Journal

Long Listed for The Center for Fiction's 2018 First Novel Prize

An Indie Next Pick for July

"So expertly does first-time novelist Lillian Li conjure the Beijing Duck House, a gaudy, tatterdemalion restaurant in Rockville, Md., that readers of Number One Chinese Restaurant can almost taste its signature dish and feel the heat of its woks. . . . By turns darkly funny and heartbreaking."

—The Wall Street Journal

"A deliciously comic debut novel about secrets, scandal, and the patriotism at the heart of the hustle."

—O, The Oprah Magazine

"Evocative. . . . Li's novel revolves around the tangled inner workings of the family-owned Beijing Duck House . . . Chinese-born family members and workers [for whom] the Beijing Duck House has displaced Beijing itself as 'the heart-center of the universe.' . . . [Li's writing] engrosses."

—New York Times Book Review

"Li shines in portraying lives shaped by work in this service industry . . . [rewarding] readers with a compelling family story about love, work, and what it means to serve."

—USA Today

"Fantastic. . . . Reminiscent of a prime time drama that you can't stop watching."

—Bon Appétit

"[A] crackling debut. . . . Li's talent for human tragicomedy grows more evident by the page."

—Entertainment Weekly

"[Li] never loses control of this tight, well-paced story, delivering tragedy, dark humor, and even a few surprises by the end."

—Shondaland

“[Li] writes with a confidence that suggests decades of experience. . . . Imaginative and evocative . . . [Number One Chinese Restaurant] is an insightful and elegant novel, beautifully written and with an impressively large and diverse cast of characters.”

—The Guardian

"A wonderfully honest portrait of what it takes to make it in America."

—The Village Voice

"Blends delicious writing with intricate family dynamics, the perfect recipe for a page-turner to devour in the summer sun."

—amNew York

“A darkly comic novel about complicated families—those created by blood and those forged through circumstance. With wit and heart, Li explores a Chinese-American community torn between ambition and loyalty as each character strives for a world bigger than the restaurant that has bound them together. An exciting debut.”

—Brit Bennett, New York Times bestselling author of The Mothers

“Li takes us into the world of restaurants that many Americans frequent, but don’t understand. The Beijing Duck House . . . is a neighborhood staple, but the labor of the owner, staff, and cooks is invisible. Li brings that world to life, giving readers a glimpse into what it takes to keep establishments running and serving soul-stirring food.”

—Bitch Media

“[Number One Chinese Restaurant] is a lot of things . . . a multigenerational immigration story, an insider look at the often grueling life of the career server or line cook, a romance, a coming-of-age (at any age). Most significantly, it is a joy to read—I couldn't get enough.”

—Buzzfeed

"A smart combination of Chinese-American life, service industry travails, and the ups and downs of belonging to a family, Number One Chinese Restaurant will make great discussion fare for book clubs."

—Shelf Awareness (starred review)

“A freshly written, punchily flavored, and richly realized tale of intergenerational family strife.”

—Sunday Times

“Funny, tender, and tragic, Number One Chinese Restaurant is a perfectly seasoned debut.”

—Financial Times

"Darkly hilarious. . . . Number One Chinese Restaurant is anything but typical, as Li combines broiling anger and slow-simmering love in delicious proportions."

—BookPage

“Lillian Li is a brilliant young writer and someone to watch. Her work understands human secrets generally as well as secret places both in the world and in the mind; her narratives are complex, mysterious, moving, and surprising.”

—Lorrie Moore, New York Times bestselling author of Bark and Birds of America

“I adored the vitality of this deviously charming and smart debut. Full of impassioned and ever-yearning characters, the novel practically thumps with heartache and sharp humor. The prose sparkles, too, with the rhythm and sting of exquisitely close observation and hard-earned wisdom, announcing Lillian Li as a striking new literary talent.”

—Chang-rae Lee, New York Times bestselling author of On Such a Full Sea and Native Speaker

“Li vividly depicts the lives of her characters and gives the narrative a few satisfying turns, resulting in a memorable debut.”

—Publishers Weekly

"A vibrant multi-generational debut. . . . This engrossing novel reads like a highly entertaining soap opera."

—Book Riot

"Evoking every detail of [this restaurant] with riveting verisimilitude . . . Li's sense of the human comedy and of the aspirations burning in each human heart puts a philosophical spin on the losses of her characters. . . . A writer to watch."

—Kirkus

"Li expertly crafts a deeply felt and beautifully evoked multigenerational novel. . . . Heartful, tender, necessary, and wise."

—The Book Report

“If a Chinese restaurant can be seen as a kind of cultural performance, Lillian Li takes us behind the scenes to offer a richly engrossing story of overlapping intrigues—commercial, generational, and romantic. She conjures the 'eco-system' of this workplace with insider acuity and renders her bustling, hustling clan of waiters, hostesses, cooks, and managers with brilliant feeling. Number One Chinese Restaurant is a vibrant, memorable debut.”

—Peter Ho Davies, author of The Fortunes

"Li has crafted complex and nuanced characters . . . bringing depth and shape to the lives of those often found behind the scenes."

—Asian Review of Books

“A heady read of parents and children, youth and aging, and above all what it means to be family and how far we are willing to go to give it all up."

—The Hungry Reader

"Li taps into the universal tensions of generational conflict with a light, humane touch. . . . [A] deeply affecting, intricately detailed work."

—The National Book Review

JULY 2018 - AudioFile

Narrator Nancy Wu’s careful pacing allows listeners to absorb the multiple layers of this story about how the Han family and the staff at their successful Chinese restaurant try to balance work and their personal lives, familial duty, and dreams. On one level, the novel exposes the sometimes insurmountable gap between immigrant and American-born generations, especially in areas like work ethic and visions of the future. Another layer of the story examines the characters’ personal issues, including divorce, addiction, aging, and parenting. By varying her cadence and volume, Wu differentiates inner turmoil from public drama. Furthermore, her respectful Chinese-American accent—subtle for the younger characters and stronger for the older ones—adds depth to the listening experience. C.B.L. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2018-04-16
The owner and employees of a venerable Chinese restaurant in the D.C. suburbs face drastic changes in their lives and routines.As Li's debut opens, Jimmy Han is searching his restaurant for Ah-Jack, an elderly waiter who is late with the order of Uncle Pang—an important and dangerous man who is not actually Jimmy's uncle. "At the mouth of the hallway, a current of Duck House staff buffeted Jimmy along. The Chinese and Spanish he'd banned from the dining room filled this narrow space, echoing off the walls. Waiters blocked traffic to grab beer from the lower fridge...busboys huddled against the main waiter station, pouring leftovers into paper cartons with hasty precision....Behind the stainless-steel divider, flames whooshed up to embrace giant woks, each cook casually stir-frying as fire sprang, volcanic, from the deep, blackened burners." Evoking every detail of the setting, operation, cuisine, and culture of this restaurant with riveting verisimilitude, Li sets the stage for a complex family tragedy viewed from many angles. Jimmy has never been happy running the restaurant made famous by his late father; he's making moves to close it down and purchase a fancier venue in downtown Washington with a view of the Potomac. To raise the cash for this venture, he's hired a sexy real estate agent to sell the family mansion—though not if his mother, a bitter old woman who still lives there, has anything to say about it. Then Uncle Pang's behind-the-scenes machinations result in a dramatic catastrophe. Swept up in it are two teenage members of the restaurant's extended family, Jimmy's niece, Annie, and the recently-expelled-from-school busboy, Pat, son of the No. 1 waitress. Though nothing works out for any of the characters the way he or she wants it to, Li's sense of the human comedy and of the aspirations burning in each human heart puts a philosophical spin on the losses of her characters.With its deliciously depicted restaurant setting and knowing perspective on Chinese-American culture, this novel is two-thirds cultural comedy. The other third is something deeper and sadder. A writer to watch.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169198287
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	06/19/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,053,958

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