This week, we’re taking a closer look at Powell’s Pick of the Month, Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham.
A reading goal of mine for 2024 (call it a resolution, if you must) is to read more genre fiction. My reading tends to fall into four buckets: literary fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, and poetry. But genre is so interesting and popular these days, and I am a bookseller, so I aim to have a more well-rounded sense of what books are selling.
But genre is so interesting and popular these days, and I am a bookseller, so I aim to have a more well-rounded sense of what books are selling.
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To that end, I’ve already read my first romantasy:
That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon (a January
Pick of the Month!).
I’ve gone through genre phases before: sci-fi (junior high) and crime fiction (early high school). That broke down in late high school, when I started reading plays pretty much exclusively for a decade. (That’s right, I was a theatre major! I only mention it in nearly every Spotlight.) That intense study of dramatic literature dropped my intake of prose and also — perhaps counter-intuitively — made me skeptical of movies (I was interested in collaboration, not an auteur’s medium).
That skepticism kept me away from most the rom-coms of the nineties and the aughts, which was something of a golden age for the genre (I don’t know if that’s true; someone said it on a podcast, I think). But not all rom-coms, of course: I was often in rehearsal, but not living under a rock. I saw all of Nora Ephron’s incredibly well-written movies. And she’s who I thought of when I read Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham’s
Lunar New Year Love Story.
I saw all of Nora Ephron’s incredibly well-written movies. And she’s who I thought of when I read Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham’s Lunar New Year Love Story.
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Lunar New Year Love Story is miles away from
You’ve Got Mail, in terms of locale and the concerns of its characters. The lead character, Val, grows up a true believer in Valentine’s Day, but she becomes a cynic convinced she is destined for heartbreak. But things start to change when she takes up lion dancing. Lion dancing is a partnership and that can cause complications, which, of course, it does.
The aspect of
Lunar New Year Love Story that made me think of Ephron was the way in which seeds are skillfully planted and then pay off later: like a dozen Chekhov’s guns, but nicer. Also, it was the skill with which the supporting characters were sketched out. Really, I think that the romantic comedy is a genre about supporting friendships (that’s a free dissertation thesis idea, if you’re looking for one, and surely most of you who have read this far are).
When it comes to using the tools of the graphic novel to accomplish these subtle feats, Yang and Pham are evenly matched: his script and her art are both masterful.
I may resist New Year’s resolutions myself, but may I suggest one for the Lunar New Year? Read this at least once.