The Week's Read: Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee

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Competence can be a curse.
As a capable young woman, Casey Hahn felt compelled to choose respectability and success. But it was glamour and insight that she craved. A Korean immigrant who'd grown up in a dim, blue-collar neighborhood in Queens, she'd hoped for a bright, glittering life beyond the workhorse struggles of her parents, who managed a Manhattan dry cleaner. 

Free Food for Millionaires
by Min Jin Lee

This author's latest novel, Pachinko (my review), will be one of my favorite novels this year. Last month Lee's debut novel, published ten years ago, was offered as a kindle daily deal. How could I pass it up? The book is long and there's a lot going on but, at the halfway mark, I'm really enjoying it.

Here is a portion of the goodreads summary:

Free Food for Millionaires, the debut novel from Min Jin Lee, takes on daunting themes of love, money, race, and belief systems in this mostly satisfying tale. Casey Han is a Princeton grad, class of '93, and it is her conflicts, relationships, and temperament that inform the novel. She is the child of immigrant Korean parents who work in the same laundry in Queens where they have always worked and are trying hard to hang on to their culture. Casey has catapulted out of that life on scholarships but now that college is over, she hasn't the same opportunities as her white friends, even though she has acquired all of their expensive habits. 

The concept of free food for millionaires is the perfect irony that describes much of what Casey faces. Walter, one of her bosses, says, when a huge buffet lunch is delivered to the floor: "It's free food for millionaires... In the International Equities Department--that is, Asia, Europe, and Japan Sales--the group you're interviewing for--whichever desk that sells a deal buys lunch for everyone in the department."

What do you think? Are you tempted to continue?

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intro is now hosted by Vicki at I'd Rather Be At The Beach.