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A review by brice_mo
Real Americans by Rachel Khong
4.5
Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf For the ARC!
Rachel Khong’s bright, multigenerational Real Americansfeels like a book we’ll be discussing for the rest of 2024.
People talk about books they couldn’t put down, but this is something beyond that—it’s a book you don’t want to pick up too often because doing so will bring you closer to its end. It’s brisk and breezy, but there’s a depth that sustains it across its three major sections—each one following a different generation.
This is a book about time. More specifically, it’s about the ambition to unwrite history in lieu of scripting the present. The book’s title reflects how characters frequently wrestle with their own sense of self-definition, and Khong’s decision to follow three separate generations is executed wonderfully. We spend so much time in the first third understanding Lily as our protagonist, but by the next section, she is almost unrecognizable. In lesser books, this would read as poor writing, but it’s clear that Khong is getting at how much the decades change us, and she’s thoughtful about when she reveals relics of past selves. With the novel’s focus on family, this approach also allows us to see how much personal history is hidden, and it invites us to question whether or not that’s a problem.
Thematically, there are some really interesting ideas about how the desire to control time intersects with racial identity and erasure, but for the sake of spoilers, I won’t get into them here. Just know that there’s more to Real Americansthan a typical multigenerational immigration story, and Khong tips her hand only when it will be most narratively effective. We see characters caught in the tension of whether they are embodying “American” identity or merely performing it, often in very imagistic, physical, and nuanced ways.
The authorial voice is genuinely incredible across the book’s three sections. Each narrator draws on turns of phrase that feel unexpected but intuitive, and Khong constantly creates space for the specific, meaningless details that give our lives so much meaning. I underlined dozens—if not hundreds—of lines that made me stop because I hadn’t seen someone sound so naturally human. Read it; you’ll see what I mean.
As much as I adored Real Americans, I think setting the final third primarily in the past deflates the narrative a bit, particularly because it follows a character who has been largely absent up to that point. This part of the story is still great, but its placement feels slightly off—its revelations matter less than their consequences, which we have already encountered. For a book that wrestles so explicitly with the inescapability of time’s progression, it seems counterintuitive. Perhaps it suggests that time collapses in on itself, but it interrupts an otherwise crackling rhythm.
Despite that very minor critique, I think this is an excellent book. Rachel Khong knows that if we are going to understand the characters’ desire to be—or not be—“real Americans” we must first meet them as three real people, and her care in introducing them as such feels like a triumph.
Rachel Khong’s bright, multigenerational Real Americansfeels like a book we’ll be discussing for the rest of 2024.
People talk about books they couldn’t put down, but this is something beyond that—it’s a book you don’t want to pick up too often because doing so will bring you closer to its end. It’s brisk and breezy, but there’s a depth that sustains it across its three major sections—each one following a different generation.
This is a book about time. More specifically, it’s about the ambition to unwrite history in lieu of scripting the present. The book’s title reflects how characters frequently wrestle with their own sense of self-definition, and Khong’s decision to follow three separate generations is executed wonderfully. We spend so much time in the first third understanding Lily as our protagonist, but by the next section, she is almost unrecognizable. In lesser books, this would read as poor writing, but it’s clear that Khong is getting at how much the decades change us, and she’s thoughtful about when she reveals relics of past selves. With the novel’s focus on family, this approach also allows us to see how much personal history is hidden, and it invites us to question whether or not that’s a problem.
Thematically, there are some really interesting ideas about how the desire to control time intersects with racial identity and erasure, but for the sake of spoilers, I won’t get into them here. Just know that there’s more to Real Americansthan a typical multigenerational immigration story, and Khong tips her hand only when it will be most narratively effective. We see characters caught in the tension of whether they are embodying “American” identity or merely performing it, often in very imagistic, physical, and nuanced ways.
The authorial voice is genuinely incredible across the book’s three sections. Each narrator draws on turns of phrase that feel unexpected but intuitive, and Khong constantly creates space for the specific, meaningless details that give our lives so much meaning. I underlined dozens—if not hundreds—of lines that made me stop because I hadn’t seen someone sound so naturally human. Read it; you’ll see what I mean.
As much as I adored Real Americans, I think setting the final third primarily in the past deflates the narrative a bit, particularly because it follows a character who has been largely absent up to that point. This part of the story is still great, but its placement feels slightly off—its revelations matter less than their consequences, which we have already encountered. For a book that wrestles so explicitly with the inescapability of time’s progression, it seems counterintuitive. Perhaps it suggests that time collapses in on itself, but it interrupts an otherwise crackling rhythm.
Despite that very minor critique, I think this is an excellent book. Rachel Khong knows that if we are going to understand the characters’ desire to be—or not be—“real Americans” we must first meet them as three real people, and her care in introducing them as such feels like a triumph.