{"id":324,"date":"2020-09-21T18:23:15","date_gmt":"2020-09-21T18:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/?p=324"},"modified":"2021-04-13T04:43:20","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T04:43:20","slug":"the-end-of-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/?p=324","title":{"rendered":"The End of East"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Spanning eighty-five years and exploring themes of isolation, immigration, romance and sanity, The End of East<\/em> is an incredibly moving portrait of one emblematic family and Vancouver\u2019s Chinatown.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The End of East<\/em> weaves in and out of past and present, picking up the threads of Sam\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s long illness.<\/p>\n

An exquisite and evocative debut, The End of East <\/em>sets family conflicts against the backdrop of Vancouver\u2019s Chinatown\u2014a city within a city where dreams are shattered as quickly as they\u2019re built, and where history repeats itself through the generations.<\/p>\n

Knopf Canada<\/a>, New Face of Fiction, 2007<\/strong>
\nThomas Dunne Books, 2008<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cLee is a courageous young writer.\u201d
\n\u2013The San Diego Union-Tribune<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u201cBeautifully crafted, The End of East<\/em> moves seamlessly from era to era, country to country. Lee tells a provocative and deeply moving tale about how ethnic identity creates an emotional battlefield for those trying to traverse two cultures in one country.\u201d
\n\u2013The Baltimore Sun<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cOnly 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.\u201d
\n\u2013The Halifax Chronicle-Herald<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cVancouver native Jen Sookfong Lee\u2019s first novel is impressive, both in terms of its accomplished prose and its ambitious three-generational scope\u2026Lee\u2019s talent is undeniable.\u201d
\n\u2013The National Post<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cJen Sookfong Lee is aware, it would seem, of the dark side of mythmaking, its distorting and even parasitic price. It\u2019s one of many things that make her a novelist to watch.\u201d
\n\u2013The Calgary Herald<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWith The End of East<\/em>, 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.\u201d
\n\u2013The Montreal Gazette<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cJen Lee shows off a confident style, investing The End of East<\/em> with rich imagery and well-wrought characters and deftly handling the complexities of the various storylines.\u201d
\n\u2013The Vancouver Sun<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spanning eighty-five years and exploring themes of isolation, immigration, romance and sanity, The End of East is an incredibly moving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":179,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":524,"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions\/524"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sookfong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}