Book Review: Natalie Tan's Book of Luck & Fortune

Natalie Tan returns to her once thriving San Franciscan Chinatown neighborhood home after hearing the news of her mother’s death. Natalie left seven years ago, after fighting with her agoraphobic mother about her desire to become a chef, like her grandmother before her. After all this time, Natalie finds that the neighborhood is not as she left it, now facing the threat of gentrification and capitalism.

Natalie inherits her grandmother’s restaurant and hopes reopening the restaurant will help to revitalize the neighborhood, bringing back some of their history. She meets with the neighborhood seer, who tells her that success will come by cooking three recipes from her grandmother’s recipe book, that will help the neighbors. Natalie is hesitant, for she resents the neighbors she believes left her alone to tend to her mother growing up. But, when Natalie starts cooking, she finds many surprises and opportunities as the result of her food.

After just reading a book involving food (Pride Prejudice and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev) and being a lover of competitive cooking shows (Top Chef, Cutthroat Kitchen, Chopped) I was excited to read a book revolving around cooking and the traditions and customs that are associated with food. However, I felt the book to be lacking.

I did not always enjoy the author, Roselle Lim’s, writing style. I found the book to be overly detailed, with many odd choices of similes and descriptive phrases. When describing a fish dish Natalie was cooking, Lim wrote, “The fish’s reddish skin had a beautiful overlapping pattern that looked as if it had been painted by some wayward mermaid.” I don’t think the addition of “as if it had been painted by some wayward mermaid,” added to the image of the fish that I had in my mind. At one point, Lim writes, “The cat followed me around like a puppy...” The comparison is completely unnecessary, as the imagery would have been sufficing, had the sentence just stated, “The cat followed me around.” These are just a few examples of the unnecessary descriptions used throughout the book. These peculiar descriptions don’t always add to the story, thus making it hard to read at times.

I also found the book to be redundant. Too many times I read variations of the same information: the neighborhood had been neglected; Natalie is worried that she will fail opening the restaurant because she failed out of culinary school; how hurt Natalie was by her father’s abandonment. In the penultimate paragraph of one chapter, Natalie is reading a note from a neighbor with an instruction to “Use the alley beside the tea shop,” when she comes to visit her. Just two paragraphs into the next chapter, Lim writes, “Miss Yu’s instructions were to bypass the tea shop for the alley.” I don’t think it was necessary for the sentence the second time, because we had just read the instruction two paragraphs earlier. As I was reading the same things over and over again throughout the book, I felt like the author didn’t trust that the reader remembered what was going on in the story. I also felt like the repetition of the same information slowed the story down.

There were also some instances of dialogue that I thought were inauthentic. Everyone seemed to be quite formal with one another. However, as I haven’t spent much time in San Fransisco’s Chinatown, I haven’t observed much conversation between neighbors. What seemed inauthentic to me might actually be accurate for the location.

In regard to the actual story, I thought it was okay. With a description on the back of the book stating, “Lim’s magical debut novel,” I anticipated there to be some fantastical elements throughout the book. However, the book relied a little more on magic than I expected, and as someone who doesn’t choose fantasy books to read, this book was a little too far outside of my preferred genres.

I did like how Lim incorporated the traditions and customs of Chinese heritage and how these customs influenced many of Natalie’s decisions. I also enjoyed the growing friendship between Natalie and her mother’s friend, Celia, and Natalie’s growing relationships with the rest of her neighbors. I thought that Natalie went through tremendous development by the end of the book and it was heartwarming to see where she ended up.

If you are willing to accept magic as a plausible reality, then I would recommend Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck & Fortune. Despite the, at times, unusual descriptions and similes and redundancy, the story is one of community and personal growth, that I think many people can relate to.