Jane Lo’s debut novel All I Ever Wanted is a heartfelt Hong Kong love story. She writes with lyrical precision and finely observed emotions of the private lives of ordinary people with candor, wit and vision. They’re your neighbors, your classmates, your colleagues and friends, all the men and women who daily rush through the streets of the city. Whose lives can too often be swallowed up by the challenges of survival for those who dare to dream. Norah and Ben are the quintessential young Hong Kong couple: they live with his single mother in the flat she raised him in with little privacy; Norah juggles part time work as an ESL language teacher while mothering their baby boy who has seriously itchy skin under the critical eye of her tough-as-steel nai nai; Ben works hard as a commercial photographer to support his family, and still give half his salary to his mother like a good filial son, but is afraid he doesn’t “deserve” his university-and-international-school educated wife with parents in Vancouver, he being just a smart local boy who only wants to do the right thing. They’re seriously stressed out, but seriously in love. Will they succeed or will the pressures of the city ultimately be too much to bear? Read this delightful novel slowly to savor all the lovely details Lo captures of a city that harbors so many disappointments and dreams. This is truly a delightful debut and we look forward to more from this talented new writer.
Xu Xi, author of Monkey in Residence and Other Speculations