Troublemaker & other Saints by Christina Chiu

The debut novel by Christina Chiu; and it is a intertwining story of three families, all Chinese immigrants and prominent figures in the society.
Hailing from Hong Kong and China, the stories were told from the different perspectives of the people involved and how they deal with the negative reactions from the conservative teachings in their own family, peers and the society.
Christina also spins the tale creatively to differentiate the generation gap in the behavior and minds of both the young and the old and creates a thought provoking tale as we wander into each of their minds.

The collection of tales are told from each individual perspective and how they perceive the situation they are facing. It gets complicated as you traverse from one chapter to the next, but they are all linked as the character recalls the character who appeared in the previous chapters.
Of course, since we are dealing with three different families here, it gets a little more complicated than that.

At the same time, the interesting part of this novel is how cleverly Christina inserts the issues of concern into the tale and spins it in a way to show how it is seen by different people in the society.
In Nobody, it is a story of how a girl feels deprived of attention and constantly feels like her existence is of no importance to anyone at all in her life and school. Dealing with a demanding father and her own grief over the loss of her own grandmother whom she is close to, she is constantly on the verge of suicide and depression. She found company in her neighbor whom also made her feel insufficient when she was not stood up for in times of humiliation.
The same girl moved on to be a third character in another story as we see from this young Chinese doctor who married a black man as her husband and was considered an outcast by her own parents.
The mention of her own husband silences the whole family faster than you can spell 'apple'.
At the same time, she is the doctor overlooking an anorexic girl whose heart is failing and she has to deal with the conservative parents of the patient who refused to agree to tubes and machine aid to maintain their daughter's life.

Another story tells of how a mother deals with her daughter's bisexuality and there is another, how the mother deals with her son's homosexuality.
Christina also explores into the stories of property tussle within siblings, sexual relationships, eagerness to please, and stealing/abuse, etc, all part of the common issues plagueing our society these days.

It was interestingly told and yet, it appears confusing at times.
I must say, I was impressed by the simplicity and yet complication which arises along the storylines.
You must have a pretty good memory to put those jigsaw puzzles together; and the overused four-letter word in the story may prove entertaining to some, or not.

A recommended read for Amy Tan's fans as well, as this is another perspective into the Chinese immigrants in the United States.