Mambo in Chinatown

Jean Kwok’s second novel follows Charlie Wong, a twenty-two year old dishwasher in Chinatown who can’t catch a break. She lives with her widowed father and her younger sister, both still mourning Charlie’s mother, who was a famous dancer in Beijing before she emigrated.

Then Charlie stumbles into a receptionist job at a ballroom dance studio uptown, and the world she walks into is so far from her old one that the book essentially splits in two.

Kwok was a professional dancer before she became a writer, and the dance scenes feel like they could only have been written by someone who has actually been in those rooms. The family dynamics, especially around the sick younger sister and the use of traditional Chinese medicine, give the book real weight.

Lighter than her debut. Worth reading on its own terms.