Kevin Kwan’s novel Crazy Rich
Asians is a beach read with the soul of a Korean drama.
Its premise even sounds like a
novelization of Boys over Flowers: Hardworking
Rachel, a second-generation American of Chinese descent, visits her
boyfriend’s family in Singapore only to discover that they’re
insanely wealthy and powerful. In fact, the Young family is so loaded
they even put Goo Joon Pyo to shame—after seeing their family
compound, a stunned character theorizes that they must be “richer
than god.”
Once upon a time, sex-and-shopping novels from authors like Danielle Steele and Judiths Krantz and McNaught were all the rage. Crazy Rich Asians is definitely a throwback to this era, but with a modern twist: it’s a shopping novel. There’s hardly any sex—the only lust to be found in its pages is inspired by bespoke suits, real estate, and thirty-carat jewels. Which, in its own way, is also reminiscent of Kdrama.
The novel’s opening scene says it all: A group of these crazy rich Asians arrive at a posh British hotel only to be treated with racist disdain by the manager. Within the space of a paragraph, the hotel’s owner arrives with the news that he’s just made a mint by selling the place to a nice family from Singapore. As you might expect, the crazy rich get their room and the manager gets his walking papers.
