Hai is a 19-year-old Vietnamese-American on the brink of
suicide when an elderly Lithuanian immigrant, Grazina, talks him out of jumping
from a bridge. Ultimately, Hai saves her
as well, by moving in with her and becoming her de facto caretaker. Grazina is still having flashbacks of
Russians and Nazis, and Hai plays along during these episodes to calm her down,
calling himself Sgt. Pepper. Hai still
has a drug problem after rehab and has convinced his mother that he is in
medical school. In reality he is working
a minimum wage job at HomeMarket, whose menu sounds a lot like the now almost
defunct Boston Market. The misfit
employees of HomeMarket, including Hai’s cousin whose mother is incarcerated,
become Hai’s family, along with Grazina.
The characters in this novel are well-developed, colorful and poignant,
as all are struggling with an assortment of problems—mental, physical,
financial, you name it. However, the
tone never descends into melancholy. The
writing is mostly good but is occasionally overdone and pretentious, and the
pace is glacial. The opening chapter in
particular is purely descriptive of the setting, and we have to make it to
Chapter 2 to get to the aborted suicide.
A road trip near the end has the potential to provide a spark but doesn’t
really deliver.
