Jason Molenda reviewed Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan
Review of 'Sex and Vanity' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
It's a fun trashy book -- I think I heard someone compare this to watching the tv soap opera Dynasty? Not a bad comparison! It's trashy new-money rich people and restrained old-money rich people mingling with our protagonist walking into this world unprepared. The author cannot get enough of dropping names and brands of cars, watches, clothes, and jewelry; he either loves thinking about these things, or thinks his readers will, but the characters who are put in the best light eschew all of this, and we read criticisms of mainlander chinese people lining up to buy gucci merchandise. Is the author ridiculing the obsession with these brands, or is he reveling in it? He seems to want to both criticize this consumerist culture while emphasizing all of the minute details himself in every chapter.
I love the singapore setting, I love the melange of languages that we see all …
It's a fun trashy book -- I think I heard someone compare this to watching the tv soap opera Dynasty? Not a bad comparison! It's trashy new-money rich people and restrained old-money rich people mingling with our protagonist walking into this world unprepared. The author cannot get enough of dropping names and brands of cars, watches, clothes, and jewelry; he either loves thinking about these things, or thinks his readers will, but the characters who are put in the best light eschew all of this, and we read criticisms of mainlander chinese people lining up to buy gucci merchandise. Is the author ridiculing the obsession with these brands, or is he reveling in it? He seems to want to both criticize this consumerist culture while emphasizing all of the minute details himself in every chapter.
I love the singapore setting, I love the melange of languages that we see all the characters using throughout the book, and the classist implications of those language choices. I've never been to singapore, but it feels realistic.
There's a huge cast of characters which I found a little hard to spot who we were following in the first third of the book, and we don't spend a lot of time with many of them so we've got a bunch of shallowly sketched people.
After reading a lot of romance the past couple of years, the author's interest in the central romantic relationship is amazingly low, we get an occasional longing look towards a partner, we get a few romanic gestures, but it's mostly implied that our main couple are Wholesome And Good And In Love and while we get into things a little more when they have a bump in the road, the book seems way more interested in the designer dresses than in its characters. It's terrible of me to say something so gender essentialist, but I was not surprised this was written by a man.
I don't know if I'm going to read the second book in the series but you can be SURE I'm seeing the movie this weekend!! This would make for a great movie and I'm 100% looking forward to seeing it.
