Review | Asian-American’s powerful debut novel depicts Chinese sisters’ solidarity in the face of mental illness
Mira T. Lee’s first book, following several years of short story writing, places her among the canon of Asian-American women writers exploring the immigrant experience
Everything Here is Beautiful
by Mira T. Lee
Pamela Dorman Books
The onset of psychosis appears abruptly in Mira T. Lee’s debut novel, Everything Here is Beautiful. Lucia Bok, an intelligent and seemingly healthy young woman, suddenly starts exhibiting disturbing behaviour in her 20s. Her episodes of insanity, which puncture an otherwise sane daily life, are disjointed and jarring, just as they must be for the real-life sufferers of mental illness and their loved ones.
The book begins as a heartstring-tugging immigrant tale. A widow leaves China and tries to start a new life by moving herself and two young daughters into the dank basement of an American uncle. The uncle is almost as cartoonishly brutal – screaming and throwing things down the stairs – as the mother is self-sacrificial.
Miranda, the responsible older daughter, cooks and cares for her baby sister, Lucia, while the mother works during the day and takes classes at night. This hardworking family sees glints of hope in achieving the American dream when the mother qualifies as an accountant, moves the family to a proper house with a garden and puts the girls through college.
Miranda becomes a respectable career woman, with a wardrobe of pinstriped suits and a Swiss doctor boyfriend. Lucia, meanwhile, is a free spirit who backpacks through Latin America. She marries a bohemian Russian Jew who runs a health-food cafe in New York City, and settles down to help him run the shop.
