THE BETTER MOTHER

Knopf Canada, May 2011
Vintage Canada paperback now available
Finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award 2012

From a master of family dynamics comes this vivid tale of two misfits who find each other while stumbling toward their own true identities.

In 1958, eight-year-old Danny Lim has been sent to buy cigarettes for his father, when he realizes that he has lost the money. Frantic, he rushes through Vancouver’s Chinatown and behind a nightclub, where he sees Miss Val, a long-time burlesque dancer. Danny is enraptured with her sequined garters and silk robe, and Val, touched by his fascination, gives him a pack of cigarettes and her silk belt.

Years later, Danny spends his days working as a wedding photographer and his nights cruising Stanley Park, far away from the home where his parents and sister live. He realizes that the key to understanding himself and his family lies in his connection to Miss Val, and he is determined to find her.

Before she became the Siamese Kitten, a major player on the North American circuit, Miss Val was Valerie Nealy, a feisty girl growing up in a rundown house beside the Fraser River. But to find the stardom she thought she wanted, she had to make a series of seemingly irrevocable decisions.

Set mostly during an unseasonably hot summer in Vancouver in 1982 when HIV/AIDS was spreading rapidly, The Better Mother brims with undeniable tragedy, but resounds with the power of friendship, change and truth. It will cement Jen Sookfong Lee’s reputation as one of this country’s finest young novelists.

“Lee is an undeniably talented writer.”–The Globe and Mail

“One of these days Lee’s name will appear on all the big awards short lists. You heard it here first.”–NOW Toronto

“An entertaining and gripping tale that will keep readers enthused.”–The Vancouver Sun

“Straight-ahead page-turning brilliance.”–The National Post

“With remarkable facility, Lee breathes life into two characters who lead lives of relative anonymity, interspersed with fleeting bursts of joy and gratification. This novel is a moving example of the ways in which memories can become ‘ghosts, clinging to the body like the anchoring threads of a spider’s web,’ and chance encounters can lead to enduring love.”–The Winnipeg Free Press

“Lee is a fine storyteller, conjuring the histories of her amiable characters and a Vancouver that remains today in the collective memory of its long-time residents. More than a nostalgic montage of times and places, The Better Mother is an evocative portrait of two lonely hearts and their synchronized longings.”–The Georgia Straight

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SHELTER

Annick Press, February 2011

A vulnerable girl goes to extremes for love.

Featuring “Chill, Hush,” a short story by Jen Sookfong Lee
From Diaspora Dialogues and Zephyr Press, April 2009

“Where is here?” Northrop Frye’s classic conundrum gets a refreshing spin in TOK: Writing the New City, a luminous new anthology from Canada’s established and emerging literary voices. From Vancouver to Halifax, and Toronto to Montreal, writers, poets and dramatists explore the diverse and contemporary issues of urban Canadian lives.

TOK: Writing the New City is the fourth book in an annual anthology series published by Zephyr Press, and marks the anthology’s expansion into the creative exploration of Canadian cities beyond Toronto, including Montreal, Halifax and Vancouver.

Included in this anthology are: Anar Ali, Ken Babstock, Shauntay Grant, Rawi Hage, Jen Sookfong Lee, Daniel David Moses, Antanas Sileika, and many others.

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THE END OF EAST

Knopf Canada’s New Face of Fiction, 2007

Vintage Canada paperback now available at your favourite online or neighbourhood bookstore
Thomas Dunne hardcover now available across the U.S.

Spanning eighty-five years and exploring themes of isolation, immigration, romance and sanity, The End of East is an incredibly moving portrait of one emblematic family and Vancouver’s Chinatown.

Samantha Chan returns home to Vancouver to care for her aging mother, abruptly leaving an unfinished life in Montreal. Feeling abandoned by her four sisters and resentful at the city she thought she had escaped forever, she finds herself cobbling together a makeshift family history and delving into stories that began in 1913, when her grandfather, Seid Quan, then eighteen years old, first stepped on to North American soil.

The End of East weaves in and out of past and present, picking up the threads of Sam’s grandparents and parents: Seid Quan, whose loneliness in this foreign country is profound even as he joins the Chinatown community; Shew Lin, whose hopes for her family are threatened by her own actions; Pon Man’s tension between obligation and desire; and Siu Sang, who tries to be the caregiver everyone expects, even as she feels herself unravelling. Through it all, Samantha, who carries within her all the conflicts of the past, is embroiled in her own struggle, a volatile mixture of dangerous love affairs, a difficult and duty-filled relationship with her mother, and the still-fresh memories of her father’s long illness.

An exquisite and evocative debut, The End of East sets family conflicts against the backdrop of Vancouver’s Chinatown—a city within a city where dreams are shattered as quickly as they’re built, and where history repeats itself through the generations.

“Lee is a courageous young writer.”
–The San Diego Union-Tribune

“Only 30, Lee has crafted one of the most sophisticated and structurally complex novels published in Canada in years. Perhaps, more importantly, she has created an emotional powerhouse of a novel about a family unable to express their love for one another.”
–The Halifax Chronicle-Herald

“Vancouver native Jen Sookfong Lee’s first novel is impressive, both in terms of its accomplished prose and its ambitious three-generational scope…Lee’s talent is undeniable.”
–The National Post

“Jen Sookfong Lee is aware, it would seem, of the dark side of mythmaking, its distorting and even parasitic price. It’s one of many things that make her a novelist to watch.”
–The Calgary Herald

“With The End of East, Lee has constructed an accomplished and complex story about the intricate set of issues that surround Chinese-Canadian identity, a story that will ring true for Canadians of other backgrounds.”
–The Montreal Gazette

“Jen Lee shows off a confident style, investing The End of East with rich imagery and well-wrought characters and deftly handling the complexities of the various storylines.”
–The Vancouver Sun