![]() ![]() ![]() He might shrink, but he never goes away.” Relationships are complex and real: difficult and tense at times, but often loving and caring. Uncle Pang, a gangster and “VIP” patron of the restaurant whose presence is felt throughout, is “like the moon. Descriptions are imaginative and evocative when Ah-Jack takes his friend’s hand, it opens acceptingly, “like a mollusc” an eel dish, “buttery and sweet”, flakes “against tongue like snow”. This is Li’s debut, yet she writes with a confidence that suggests decades of experience. “They were all friends,” Li writes, “if one defined friendship as the natural occurrence between people who, after colliding for decades, have finally eroded enough to fit together.” The restaurant’s owners, the Han brothers, manage tensions among the staff. Multiple families, each with its roots in China, come together under the restaurant’s roof. New recruits Annie and Pat are the teenage children of staff members together they skive and complain (“every day at a Chinese restaurant was bring-your-kid-to-work day,” Annie jokes). The oldest is Ah-Jack, a veteran of the restaurant who can wrap duck in his sleep but no longer carry heavy dishes from kitchen to dining room. T he tireless staff of the Beijing Duck, a Chinese restaurant in Rockville, Maryland, form the cast of this Women’s prize-longlisted intergenerational family saga. ![]()
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