Full of warmth, compassion and generosity of spirit, The Number One Chinese Restaurant is a bittersweet investigation of family life and how tension and frustration can simmer when your siblings are also your business colleagues. Poignant without being trite and rich in wit and wisdom, Li’s heart-warming novel is a mouth-watering literary feast.
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019
The popular Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland has been serving devoted regulars for decades, but behind the staff's professional smiles simmer tensions, heartaches and grudges from decades of bustling restaurant life.
Owner Jimmy Han has ambitions for a new high-end fusion place, hoping to eclipse his late father's homely establishment. Jimmy's older brother, Johnny, is more concerned with restoring the dignity of the family name than his faltering relationship with his own teenaged daughter, Annie. Nan and Ah-Jack, longtime Duck House employees, yearn to turn their thirty-year friendship into something more, while Nan's son, Pat, struggles to stay out of trouble.
When disaster strikes and Pat and Annie find themselves in a dangerous game that means tragedy for the Duck House, their families must finally confront the conflicts and loyalties simmering beneath the red and gold lanterns.
Publisher: Pushkin Press
ISBN: 9781911590095
Number of pages: 336
Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
A warm, moving, multi-generational family saga, but with a blackly comic streak that will make you snort your tea - Sam Baker, The Pool Bedtime Bookclub
Insightful, tragic and hilarious - R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
A freshly written, punchily flavoured and richly realised tale of intergenerational family strife - Sunday Times
Funny, tender and tragic, Number One Chinese Restaurant is a perfectly seasoned delectable dish of a debut - Financial Times
Powerful, sensual, often comical... unforgettable - The Times
A joy to read - I couldn't get enough - Buzzfeed
Hugely entertaining... full of grudges, intrigue and brilliantly complex characters - ELLE
Full of insight into immigrant families' lives... This is Li's debut yet she writes with a confidence that suggests decades of experience... an insightful and elegant novel, beautifully written and with an impressively large and diverse cast of characters - Guardian
Captivating... full of sensual imagery... colourful and unforced... a debut novel whose lessons can be savoured - Irish Times
A clever, compelling debut with lots of heart - Irish Examiner
Prose as peppery as the Szechuan lamb chops, and situations as sticky as the carpets - Vogue
Funny, brilliant and highly enjoyable - ELLE, Books to Watch in 2019
Beautifully depicts an all too relatable situation: being caught in a moment, unable to break out, and wishing for something bigger, better, always waiting for the singularity that will change our course. - The London Magazine
This darkly comic multigenerational saga has a compelling energy that speeds along the pages and marks a delicious start to a writing career - Daily Mail
What a delicious read! I devoured it in one sitting, and half an hour later I could have read it all over again - Saga Magazine
With a cast of finely-drawn characters and admirably intricate plotting, Number One Chinese Restaurant is an intelligent read that becomes more absorbing with every page. A rich, satisfying debut from Lillian Li - Culturefly
Simultaneously heart-warming and humorous in its deep exploration of the lives of restaurant staff and families... beautifully captures the diverse nature of humanity - CUB Magazine
Skilfully created... a great story about ordinary folks living through peculiar and deeply troubling times - New Books Magazine
Packed with action and populated by an array of varied, complex characters, Number One Chinese Restaurant is an entertaining and insightful read - Pendora Magazine
An engaging tale of family (dis)loyalties... an absorbing novel - The Writes of Women (blog)
Incredible... heart-warming,,, delicious... I devoured it like my favourite Chinese meal - The Last Word (blog)
The writing flows around a story that offers sticky, dark humour... a story of family that is universal - Never Imitate (blog)
Lillian Li's brilliant debut... heartfelt and witty - Foyles.co.uk
A book full of heart, joy, sadness and delicious food, Number One Chinese Restaurant has all the ingredients for a heartwarming and introspective novel about family and sacrifice - Vincent's Bookcase (blog)
Though lightened with comedic moments, the quiet tragedy of familial resentment lies at the heart of the story. 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)
Action-packed... a compelling family story about love, work and what it means to serve - USA Today
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 - Wall Street Journal
A singular achievement, by turns insightful, tragic, and hilarious. The Beijing Duck House, the family-owned restaurant at the center of this novel, might be a made-up place, but the people who keep it going are entirely and splendidly alive - R.O. Kwon, author of 'The Incendiaries'
A deliciously comic debut novel about secrets, scandal, and the patriotism at the heart of the hustle - O, The Oprah Magazine, Top Books of the Summer
Li humanizes cruelty. Where another would look away, she dives under a microscope, determined to see it clearly. The result is a wonderfully honest portrait of what it takes to make it in America - Village Voice
An enthralling plot line reminiscent of a prime time drama that you can't stop watching... we couldn't put it down - Bon Appétit
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 - Kirkus Reviews
Li vividly depicts the lives of her characters... a memorable debut - Publishers Weekly
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
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
Full of impassioned and ever-yearning characters, the prose sparkles, too... announcing a striking new literary talent - Chang-rae Lee
Li's talent for human tragicomedy grows more evident by the page... Li generously realizes the dreams, the regrets, and the resilience of a family holding on to its American dream, hoping it doesn't slip away - Entertainment Weekly
This book really intrigued me before I started reading Number One Chinese Restaurant the debut by Lillian Li. (One, Imprint of Pushkin Press). I need not have worried. An incredible novel set in a Chinese restaurant... More
Firstly, thank you to the publishers for my review copy.
I was initially attracted to the book by its title, but also slightly put off by the title?
Then it made the women's prize long list for 2019 so I decided...
More
A solid debut which introduces the reader to the messy lives, and family relationships, of a set of complex characters all connected, in some way, to the same restaurant.
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