What We Were Promised Fails to Keep Its Promise

photo from: https://www.elle.vn/

Lucy Tan's What We Were Promised centers on the Zhens, Wei and Lina, a Chinese couple who move to America and then return to Shanghai as wealthy, westernized expats with their daughter Karen.

The novel moves between the past, when Lina and Wei were young children set into an arranged marriage, and the present, where they've settled into a loving marriage, but still have trouble communicating with each other.

When Lina accuses one of the housekeepers of stealing a bracelet, it seems to set into motion a chain of events that force Lina and Wei to remember the past and reevaluate their current situation. Wei's estranged brother, Qiang, once involved in black society and gambling, calls out of the blue to visit, and it quickly becomes apparent that Lina and Qiang had a close relationship back in the village. More secrets are revealed, about relationships and identity, and Karen's ayi (babysitter) Sunny can't help but feel both disgust and awe at the lives and affairs of the wealthy, meanwhile she works 12 hours a day to send money home to her parents.

The book comes in at over 300 pages, but it could probably lose 100. At its current length, I expected more - more depth rather than a cursory peek at the topics it promises to dive into: the complexities of Chinese expats returning to their native country, the struggle between tradition, family, and a modern, material world, the woman's "duty" to bear children, westernization...

What We Were Promised could have really scraped the bones of these issues, but instead it just rests on the surface. I didn't feel the urgency or weight I should have.

5/10 📕