Frances Park: When my Sister Was Cleopatra Moon

(Chatto and Windus)

$34.95

Review by Gilbert Wong*

The great burden for any Asian American or any Asian - insert your country of choice - writer is the redoubtable Amy Tan. Never mind that her subsequent novels have failed to match the impact of The Joy Luck Club. That first novel became a template Asian-American writing had to measure up to.

Tan's subject matter - the struggle for identity for the children of migrants - has almost become a sub-genre of fiction, as what seemed like dozens of writers with similar tales burst into print.

By my reckoning, the first Korean-American writer to make a genuine breakthrough was Chang-Rae Lee, whose elegant prose and willingness to strike further into the territory of the imagination brought fresh insight to interracial relationships and the tension between generations.

Park's first novel owes more of a debt to Tan. Cleo and Marcy Moon are sisters, though like opposite faces of the lunar satellite. Cleo is a pouting sex goddess, sophisticated and free with her favours. Marcy is settled, ethical, plain and prone to take up causes.

Inevitably their relationship becomes more vexed as they grow to adulthood. Cleo becomes a successful entrepreneur selling exotic sauces, Marcy a volunteer social worker on an Indian reservation. The vestiges of their Korean-American upbringing are about all that keep the disparate personalities together, though the sudden death of Cleo's husband forces them both to re-evaluate their relationship.

Their story begins promisingly enough. Marcy, the narrator, recounts the tale with tight prose that sometimes has the intensity of poetry: "A bed should be worn down with dreams."

But the story runs out of narrative drive and degenerates quickly into what may have once been a series of vignettes based solidly on memory rather than fiction that aims to engage the reader with the characters.

That said, file Park under one to watch.

* Gilbert Wong is the Herald arts editor.