Searching for Sylvie Lee

Jean Kwok’s third novel pivots away from the New York immigrant settings of her earlier books and into the Netherlands. Sylvie Lee, the older, polished, accomplished sister, flies to Amsterdam to visit a dying grandmother and never comes home. Her younger sister Amy, who has spent her whole life looking up to Sylvie, flies out to figure out what happened.

The story unfolds in alternating voices, including the missing woman’s, which gives the book its tension. You’re learning what happened from the person it happened to, while also watching the people who loved her chase shadows.

Kwok writes about family secrets and class with the same kind of attention she brought to Girl in Translation. The Dutch chapters feel researched but lived in. The ending is divisive but earned.