*A Reader's Digest Best Book of 2023*
*A Publishers Lunch Buzz Book*
*A Book of the Month Club Pick*
*A Brit+Co Book to Read in 2023*
*A Town & Country Best Book to Read in May*
*A Good Morning America Buzz Book Pick*
An unexpected act of violence brings together a Chinese-American family and a wealthy white lawyer in this propulsive and sweeping story of family, identity, and the American experience.
Set in New York and China over three decades, Paper Names explores what it means to be American from three different perspectives. There’s Tony, a Chinese-born engineer turned Manhattan doorman who immigrated to the United States to give his family a better life. His daughter, Tammy, whom we meet at age nine and follow through adulthood, and who grapples with the expectations of a first-generation American and her own personal desires. Finally, there’s Oliver, a handsome white lawyer with a dark family secret who lives in the building where Tony works. A sudden attack causes their lives to intertwine in ways that will change them forever.
Taut, panoramic and powerful, debut novelist Susie Luo’s Paper Names is an unforgettable story about the long shadows of our parents, the ripple effect of our decisions and the ways in which our love transcends difference.
Genre: Literary Fiction
*A Publishers Lunch Buzz Book*
*A Book of the Month Club Pick*
*A Brit+Co Book to Read in 2023*
*A Town & Country Best Book to Read in May*
*A Good Morning America Buzz Book Pick*
An unexpected act of violence brings together a Chinese-American family and a wealthy white lawyer in this propulsive and sweeping story of family, identity, and the American experience.
Set in New York and China over three decades, Paper Names explores what it means to be American from three different perspectives. There’s Tony, a Chinese-born engineer turned Manhattan doorman who immigrated to the United States to give his family a better life. His daughter, Tammy, whom we meet at age nine and follow through adulthood, and who grapples with the expectations of a first-generation American and her own personal desires. Finally, there’s Oliver, a handsome white lawyer with a dark family secret who lives in the building where Tony works. A sudden attack causes their lives to intertwine in ways that will change them forever.
Taut, panoramic and powerful, debut novelist Susie Luo’s Paper Names is an unforgettable story about the long shadows of our parents, the ripple effect of our decisions and the ways in which our love transcends difference.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Paper Names is a sharp and honest look at family, immigration, and all that we trade away to find ourselves - but it is also a literary page-turner that is as unsettling as it is full of grace. Susie Luo's debut is unblinking, nimble, and written with the kind of clarity one expects from a seasoned author. The word stunning is not hyperbole here." - Brian Castleberry
"With a keen eye for detail, a strong sense of pacing, and a deep understanding of human nature, Susie Luo crafts a moving portrait of two families whose fates intertwine. Deftly moving back and forth in time, she explores race, class, assimilation, loyalty, betrayal and ambition. Paper Names is a sensitive and timely novel." - Christina Baker Kline
"A stunningly accomplished debut about two very different families, the struggling Zhangs and the wealthy powerful Wrights, both on a collision course with the American Dream and with one another, passing down their legacies and secrets through the generations. Luo has crafted an absolutely gorgeous novel about the ripples of parental expectations, the force of memory, and the fierceness of love. So alive and real, you don't merely read this wondrous novel as much as you get to live it." - Caroline Leavitt
"Paper Names is one of the most compelling evocations of the American dream I've ever read, an unwaveringly honest accounting of the costs of achieving that dream. Here you're in the hands of a supremely gifted storyteller who's unwinding a tale that is by turns tragic and redemptive, and always engrossing. I found the book impossible to put down, as much for its propulsive narrative as for its carefully observed portrait of the imperfect nature of love, and the fraught, untamable state of being human." - Jack Livings
"Paper Names has the rare one-two punch of plot twists and sharp, absorbing prose. Luo portrays the ache of the impossible distance between parents and children, the inevitable corruption caused by wealth and privilege, the hopes, fears, and ambitions of a father navigating life in a new country, and the life-defining decisions of woman balancing her own success with sudden tragedy and long-buried truth, all while infusing each scene with a sense of deep love and longing." - Katie Runde
"Empathetic, propulsive, and timely, Luo's confident plotting shines in this story of three Americans attempting to redefine themselves in a changing country as their pasts and futures collide. A magnificent debut." - J Ryan Stradal
"Susie Luo's spectacular debut Paper Names is the story of the Zhang family, Chinese immigrants struggling to achieve the American dream and the Wright family, gluttons of privilege intent to bury their scandalous past. Explosive and riveting, the story whipstitches in and out of time like a golden needle. When 9-year-old Tianfei becomes Tammy, she becomes a character in her new American life in a world she cannot control. Twenty years on, identity, love, ambition and grief become the threads of Tammy's story as she discovers who she is on her own terms. Brilliant." - Adriana Trigiani
"With a keen eye for detail, a strong sense of pacing, and a deep understanding of human nature, Susie Luo crafts a moving portrait of two families whose fates intertwine. Deftly moving back and forth in time, she explores race, class, assimilation, loyalty, betrayal and ambition. Paper Names is a sensitive and timely novel." - Christina Baker Kline
"A stunningly accomplished debut about two very different families, the struggling Zhangs and the wealthy powerful Wrights, both on a collision course with the American Dream and with one another, passing down their legacies and secrets through the generations. Luo has crafted an absolutely gorgeous novel about the ripples of parental expectations, the force of memory, and the fierceness of love. So alive and real, you don't merely read this wondrous novel as much as you get to live it." - Caroline Leavitt
"Paper Names is one of the most compelling evocations of the American dream I've ever read, an unwaveringly honest accounting of the costs of achieving that dream. Here you're in the hands of a supremely gifted storyteller who's unwinding a tale that is by turns tragic and redemptive, and always engrossing. I found the book impossible to put down, as much for its propulsive narrative as for its carefully observed portrait of the imperfect nature of love, and the fraught, untamable state of being human." - Jack Livings
"Paper Names has the rare one-two punch of plot twists and sharp, absorbing prose. Luo portrays the ache of the impossible distance between parents and children, the inevitable corruption caused by wealth and privilege, the hopes, fears, and ambitions of a father navigating life in a new country, and the life-defining decisions of woman balancing her own success with sudden tragedy and long-buried truth, all while infusing each scene with a sense of deep love and longing." - Katie Runde
"Empathetic, propulsive, and timely, Luo's confident plotting shines in this story of three Americans attempting to redefine themselves in a changing country as their pasts and futures collide. A magnificent debut." - J Ryan Stradal
"Susie Luo's spectacular debut Paper Names is the story of the Zhang family, Chinese immigrants struggling to achieve the American dream and the Wright family, gluttons of privilege intent to bury their scandalous past. Explosive and riveting, the story whipstitches in and out of time like a golden needle. When 9-year-old Tianfei becomes Tammy, she becomes a character in her new American life in a world she cannot control. Twenty years on, identity, love, ambition and grief become the threads of Tammy's story as she discovers who she is on her own terms. Brilliant." - Adriana Trigiani
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