I really liked the whole family dynamic of this. and the setting over Christmas, as it reminded me of The Family Stone and so many other classic stories, but I couldn’t get myself to feel particularly invested in what happened to the brothers or anyone else really.

I love being given the opportunity to update our school library which is a unique space for both senior students and staff to access high quality literature. This is definitely a must-buy. It kept me absolutely gripped from cover to cover and is exactly the kind of read that just flies off the shelves. It has exactly the right combination of credible characters and a compelling plot thatI just could not put down. This is a great read that I couldn't stop thinking about and it made for a hugely satisfying read. I'm definitely going to order a copy and think it will immediately become a popular addition to our fiction shelves. 10/10 would absolutely recommend.

I struggled with the characters and found them really hard to like. Whilst I understand not ever character has to be likeable, I could not route for any of them. This made it an overall slow read.

Don't judge a book by it's cover! I had expected something completely different with this book to begin with but once I'd got over that hurdle this was a really enjoyable read.

4 stars

The Family Chao is a modern retelling of The Brother Karamazov, that’s what I read in the blurb anyway and I wish I hadn’t because even though I haven’t read it (I tried it was way too wordy, victorian and russian) I sort of know the plot and I thought that would ruin this for me but it didn’t. I absolutely got sucked in. It was great. So this is basically a big old soapy family drama about the Family Chao headed by the huge and awful Leo ‘Big’ Chao who has a timid wife who runs off to a nunnery and three very different sons. When Big Chao is found dead in the faulty meat locker the family is under suspicion and the whole insular Asian community is put in the spotlight.
This was really good and I enjoyed all of it, the different tensions between the family are well drawn and wholly believable. Obviously I fell totally in love with Ming because he is the most repressed, self hating and psychologically damaged of all the brothers. What is not to love. And also - spoiler- the dog made it out in the end. It’s an interesting look at what it is to be a second generation immigrant, not wholly fitting in either community, the pressures of family to be two things at once and failing to meet impossible standards. It can’t be done look what happened to Ming! Poor Ming!

I was misled by the earlier reviews and the cover of this book. I expected something different, and this coloured my reactions to it. I almost gave up initially for reasons I will explain further, but I am glad I stuck with it because the ending made it worth the experiment.
Firstly, the author has used very efficient prose to tell her story. Every despair filled thought and anguished memory is vivid, making it hard for someone like me to enjoy the book. If I was the kind to appreciate a dysfunctional family who is beyond repair, then this would be something I would read and recommend to others who feel similarly. This ended up being a double-edged sword. We are to meet one of the prominent Chinese American families (of whom there are very few) in a small US town. Everything that can go wrong with a situation like that does. The children have been raised under that cloud. To top matters off, the head of the family is obnoxious, to say the least.
There is a mystery hidden within the book, but that does not take any focus because the central plot point takes forever.
We get a very detailed account of the different brothers caught in the tale; each comes with their own baggage and a tale of their own in the whole. The second half of the book was more to my liking. It brings forth all the politics and the language used by newspapers to draw attention. That, and the court case was quite engrossing.
Overall, it is a unique book. It is a mixture of genres, and the turmoil comes across quite effectively. Even if this content was not exactly to my taste, I would read another book by this author.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chan reimagines Dostoevsky's masterpiece, the Brothers Karamazov as a contemporary drama in a Chinese-American family. Three very different brothers find themselves under a suspicion when a violent murder occurs in the family.

Chan definitely knows how to write. Her prose is crisp and assured and her places are brilliantly rendered. The Chao family restaurant becomes a character almost in its own rite as the setting of confidences and confrontations. The problem is that hey writing is constrained by sticking too closely to the source material. The immigrant slant of this retelling brings in issues of race and belonging for first- and second-generation Chinese-Americans much of it is a blow-by-blow recount of Dostoevsky's story in a way that makes it overly-familiar to those who know the original story and stifles a lot of potential for originality.

A lot of readers are put off by the unlikability of the characters, with many commenting on their discomfort with the largely negative portrayals of Chinese-Americans. I think it's a disservice to ANY community to suggest that it should only ever be represented by laudible examples, anyone and everyone is entitled to see a little bit of themselves, and their communities, including the bad bits, in a good antihero or a downright villain! Again, the problem is that these are Dostoevsky's characters displaced, they haven't been given room to breathe and come into their own which means that their negative portrayal seems to feed into offensive stereotypes. This could have been a powerful theme and purpose of the retelling but fails because developed in a clear and deliberate way. It's an interesting experiment, and definitely not without its merits, but it doesn't quite succeed.

With a cover like that, it’s not too hard to see what drew me to this book. I didn’t really know what to expect from it but it had such rave reviews that I couldn’t find a reason not to give it a go.

The Fine Chao restaurant has been a staple of life in Haven, WIsconsin for decades and the Chaos have successfully avoided anyone prying too deeply into their private lives. But when father Leo Chao ends up dead, questions about the family’s three sons are raised. What was really going on inside the workings of the Chao family and what really happened to their beloved pet dog Alf, who mysteriously went missing?

In many ways, the Chaos are a typical migrant family and I know that so many children of migrants will see their parents in parts of Leo. Although he comes across as aggressive and a tyrant, I thought he actually only wanted his sacrifice and flee from his homeland to pay off for his sons. He doesn’t always go about showing them that that’s all he wants in the best way and I imagine being his child would come with a hell of a lot of pressure to do well in life. I think this might ring true with a lot of first generation Americans too.

All of the Chaos are lost in some way. They all seem to be searching or longing for something else and that’s definitely a major theme of the book. It explains why all three of the sons left Haven and tried to carve out other lives for themselves. Eventually, the pull of the family brought them all back and forced them to confront their identity issues. This feeling of displacement and confusion seems to run through the whole family and deepens the mysteries that make up the story.

Towards the end of the book, middle brother Ming reflects on where the family are and concludes that America is now an intrinsic part of their identity. Most of their lives have played out here. The brothers all have connections to Americans and it seems that their Chineseness somewhat dies with their parents. I wonder if all first generation children feel this way after the deaths of both parents. Does that part of you go away if you’ve never visited or had a deep connection with their homeland?

The Family Chao is an interesting, well-written literary mystery. It takes on some challenging themes and has some comedic lines thrown in too. I got a bit lost in the middle of the book and I found it hard to keep track of who all the side characters were. Most of all, I just wanted to find out what happened to little Alf!

The plotline is based on Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. I have not read the story itself but am familiar enough with Russian literature of this style to understand that the anguish would be painted in broad strokes and the ending would not be joyful.

The characters are archetypes: the brutish father, the long-suffering mother and the children struggling to define their own personalities in such an oppressive atmosphere. This is not subtle naval-gazing, the characters lay their souls bare on the page while hiding so many feelings from one another.

The pleasure of reading comes from the descriptions of everyday life, the interactions between the brothers, the development of secondary characters and the descriptions of all the delicious food. (That made me so hungry). We come to sympathize with the brothers – so flawed but still caring for one another, trying to do their best.

In fact I became so wrapped up in the details of Haven’s Chinese community I was 40% in before I remembered there was supposed to be a murder.
And rather than the murder the trial is the crisis-moment, the point at which the characters have to confront what they want from life, contend with the self-righteous racism of their non-immigrant neighbours and come to terms with the malignant presence hiding in their midst.
At first the ending made me so angry and then it made me sad.

Recommended for readers who enjoy family sagas.
4.5 stars rounded up because it really was good.

I can see how people like books like this, the feeling of impending doom and secrets, hateful characters doing disgusting deeds and whilst I found this very readable, there is no denying that for a mystery type book, I like it more "gentle" and a better conclusion.

It started off slow, but ultimately I had a great time with this intriguing family saga/murder mystery about a family of Chinese immigrants running a restaurant in Wisconsin. There are three brothers, one passionate, one brilliant, one shy, and an ageing father still running his restaurant with an iron fist, reminiscent of TV series such as Yellowstone and Succession.

The first part really serves to lay out all the pieces of the puzzle and from about page 100 the action starts, the puzzle slowly comes together and it becomes a real page-turner. The novel is plot-based. Of course it makes points about the immigrant experience, racism, stereotypes and integration, and at times I felt a balancing exercise was going on between sticking to the plot and trying to make these points. But that was by no means distracting and overall very well done.

I would perhaps place this more in the genre fiction category than literary fiction, but that is just to give you an idea what to expect (also because this book been billed as a Chinese ‘Brothers Karamazov’ set in the United States; a comparison I think applies primarily to the themes and not the literary value) and not a judgment because I enjoyed it a lot.

I enjoyed the audio version, but was glad to have started with the e-book so as not to miss important details.

Bear in mind I have not read the Brothers Karamazov but this retelling did not make me want to anyway. The premise sounded super interesting and I do try to read more ownvoice books whenever I can get my hands on them. I’m being nice when I say this was a bit of a let down.

A few good things though: the writing style was great and you are immersed in the story right away. Food also has to have a much honourable mention, as it is the only part I connected to in the story. The story itself is engaging, even though it was quite slow paced.

However, that’s pretty much what I enjoyed about this book. At the end of chapter 1, the character of the father, Leo Chao, gives us a glimpse of how unpleasant he might be and let me tell you it does not get better after that.

My thanks to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for a review copy of the book.

In The Family Chao, author Lan Samantha Chang gives us a retelling of The Brothers Karamazov but by setting it amongst a Chinese-American immigrant family, she weaves in further complexities of discrimination and prejudice and also of identity and belonging.

Leo and Winnie Chao are immigrants in a small town, Haven, in Wisconsin, and run a Chinese restaurant Fine Chao. They have three sons, William ‘Daggo’, Ming, and James, all good-looking but very different from each other in personality. Leo Chao is domineering and cruel, never giving up any opportunity of bullying his wife and sons, and also engaging in any amount of cheating and manipulation, little liked even amongst the immigrant community. The Chaos have been living in Haven for thirty years, but the three boys are always treated as outsiders, facing finger-pointing and name-calling, besides grappling with their father’s almost incessant torments. Dagou, the eldest has tried to make a career in music and failed, and has returned to the restaurant where he started working when his mother fell ill but stayed on. Ming tries his best to have as little connection with the town and family and even his identity, building a high-flying career for himself in New York, while the youngest James is in college—with ambitions to be a doctor.

When our story opens, James and Ming have come home for a special luncheon at the spiritual house, where Winnie has moved and taken vows some months ago, having given up her worldly possessions. We find that Dagou wants to confront his father who had promised him partnership in the restaurant but has now reneged on his word. Unpleasant words are exchanged, and Dagou voices threats. Soon the annual Christmas Party takes places at the restaurant for family and friends. For his mother, Dagou puts together the best party he possibly can. But the next morning Leo Chao is found dead—locked in the restaurant’s freezer room. Dagou, whose animosity towards and threats against his father were known by everyone, is arrested and tried. At the trial, however, more than the crime itself, issues of community and identity and prejudice are at the centre, and rumours run rife. As we navigate the trial and the family’s attempts to clear Dagou’s name, many secrets are revealed while there is also the mystery of who actually killed Leo.

This was a gripping and highly readable book; while I didn’t quite remember all the details of the Brothers Karamazov, I could see that the author has used the broad frame of the story with a manipulative and cruel father who shares a tempestuous relationship with his sons, and who is murdered, with suspicion thrown on the eldest. The personalities of the three brothers too, so far as I can remember do reflect the three Karamazovs (I only specifically remembered the oldest being strong in his emotions and giving vent to his passions, while the youngest Alyosha, the monk, believing the best of everyone).

But within this frame, she has given the three brothers individual personalities defined by more than the elements from the Karamazovs. Ming is perhaps the one we get to see most closely; he is so deeply impacted by the prejudice and discrimination all his life, that his sole aim seems to cut every tie with his identity; hating it so much that he feels cutting himself off will somehow make him something different than what he is (considering that he is otherwise intelligent, this seems irrational, yet one can perhaps understand a little). In fact, even overall, while the story might follow the broad structure of the Karamazovs, issues of discrimination and race add a further layer of depth to it, reflecting very much a kind of scenario that we would likely see in such a situation in present times—with elements of insider/outsider views; the web generating debate and comments; and every person expressing a loud view, notwithstanding how much they really know or understand. These aspects—the struggles that immigrants families have to undergo every day, the prejudice they have to face in the event of a situation like this one was excellently portrayed.

The mystery thread in the story also kept me engaged; I had honestly forgotten the answer from the Karamazovs so couldn’t really make any guesses as to whether this book would follow the same path or how it would turn out. There are also plenty of secrets and revelations all through with a few additional threads thrown in (which are also woven into the trial) which kept me reading.

I enjoyed the book overall, and my complaint if any was with the ending in terms of threads that are left for us to interpret. There are more than one way some things can go, and with the characters and circumstances as they were I felt I couldn’t make up my mind as to how things would actually turn out.

But an excellent retelling overall—4.25 stars!

The Family Chao is an interesting mystery novel which explores the experiences of different generations of an Asian-American family who own a restaurant in a Midwestern town. The very opening of the novel tells us that the family has been disgraced and then describes the series of events which lead up to the death of one of the main characters.

We are introduced to patriarch Leo Chao who runs the restaurant, his long-suffering wife Winnie Chao who has recently gone to live in a Buddhist Spiritual Home, and their three sons: Dagou, who helps his father run the restaurant and hopes to inherit it; Ming, who has left home to work in the city; and James, the youngest son, who has recently started college. The key events take place over the few days leading up to Christmas, beginning with James's attempt to resuscitate an older Asian man he has met by chance in a railway station on his way home. When James arrives home, we start to understand the various tensions within the family and other members of their community, in particular between Leo and Dagou.

I admired the way that Lan Samantha Chang set up lots of important plot points in the first half of the novel whose significance only become apparent later on, and there are some clever twists and surprises. The novel also offers some really interesting reflections on the experiences of different first and second-generation immigrants, and I liked the fact that these weren't presented as homogenous - even the three siblings have very different perspectives, as does Dagou's fiancée Katherine, who is Chinese but was adopted by a white American couple.

However, I wasn't as gripped by this novel as I had hoped to be. I'm not quite sure why as the writing was good and the overall premise was interesting. Possibly there were just too many characters and plot strands to keep track of, and some characters' motivations felt less clear. I also found the character of Leo Chao too unpleasant to be fully believable. I did find the novel quite enjoyable nonetheless, and I can imagine it working well as a TV adaptation where we get to know the characters better.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

The family Chao is a family drama with a legend like quality. Three adult brothers are the second generation offspring of a Chinese couple who run a much loved restaurant at the heart of a mid western town community. The brothers have varied experience and expectations of their position as Chinese Americans. Their relationship with their parents and one another has huge impact on the narrative, but this book is much more than character analysis. A mystery is at the heart of the story which drives the plot arc and I found this to be a gripping read.

The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang is a mystery about an immigration family.
In short, we follow the dysfunctional Chao family who have quietly run their Chinese restaurant in a small American Town of Haven for three decades but it’s when the patriarch of the family is found dead that long simmering tensions and events force the community to turn its attention to the three sons,
Dagou - the handsome son
Ming - the accomplished son
James - the good son
It’s an interesting Chinese family saga portraying deep rooted cultures living in modern times in a different country. It’s got it all, rivalry, judgement, race, passion and condemnation but to be honest I did find it a bit hard going in places. I did enjoy the humour and the dynamics of the family…an enlightening read for me.
Big thanks to Lan Samantha Chang, Pushkin Press and NetGalley for this eARC which I chose to read in return for my honest review.

A darkly comedic family saga like no other!
I saw this was tipped as a recommendation for fans of Jeffrey Eugenides so I picked it up and I was not disappointed.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

In the build up to Christmas the Chao family gather in Haven Wisconsin for a special lunch at the Buddhist nunnery, where their mother Winnie has recently taken orders.

It’s clear that all is not well in the Family Chao. Winnie, the matriarch, has ostensibly left her philandering husband Leo. Dagou, the eldest son, works in the family restaurant, Fine Chao, and dreams of taking it over having given up on his musical ambitions several years earlier. Ming, the middle son, leads a successful life in Manhattan and rarely, and in this case reluctantly, travels back for the family reunion. James, the youngest son, a young naive medical student - and very much the baby of the family has been shielded from the family tensions until now.

The tensions between Dagou and his father Leo overspill into the special lunch and then boil over into the annual Chao Christmas Dinner. The following day the body of Leo Chao is found in the restaurant meat freezer, and so begins the investigation into his death and possible murder.

All families are complicated and I really enjoyed the family drama / legal drama fused into the backdrop of a small Mid-Western town, the immigrant experience, being welcomed by some of the community, being different and singled out by others, and of overriding dream and hope of living the American dream.

Huge thanks to Netgalley and the publishers Pushkin Press for the ARC.

I really enjoyed this. It is paced like a thriller in many ways, but has a wonderfully rich, family epic kind of vibe to it. The Chao family run a Chinese restaurant in the small American town of Haven. The parents have three sons and the book opens as they converge for a dinner to celebrate the fact that their mother, after years of being married to Leo Chao, the overbearing patriarch of the family, has become a Buddhist nun at the local temple. Tempers are frayed during the meal and Leo, ever the trouble maker, starts up the long running feud with his oldest son, Dagou, about who will inherit the restaurant. Things are aired in public and the nastiness boils over until Leo is found frozen to death in the freezer of the restaurant and the community starts to unravel.

I very much enjoyed the squeezing of the epic scope of the novel into the small town setting which the author really utilises to show how restrictive beliefs, ideas and prejudices are. All the dirty laundry is aired here and she explores racism both between the Chinese community and the white Americans but also within the Chinese community themselves. She looks at inter-generational tensions and family grievances, the clash between the old and the new, both people and countries. This is beautifully handled and keeps you guessing right up to the end.

I was unable to finish this novel. And it's of no fault to the writer, it reads as a very clever and witty novel. Unfortunately, I felt like there was some inside joke I was getting and nothing spurred me on to continue reading so could find out. Or maybe I'm just reading this at the wrong time. I plan to get a physical copy so I can revisit it.