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Title details for Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee - Available

Free Food for Millionaires

A Novel

by Min Jin Lee
Shelly Frasier
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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Casey Han's four years at Princeton gave her many things, "But no job and a number of bad habits." Casey's parents, who live in Queens, are Korean immigrants working in a dry cleaner, desperately trying to hold on to their culture and their identity. Their daughter, on the other hand, has entered into rarified American society via scholarships. But after graduation, Casey sees the reality of having expensive habits without the means to sustain them. As she navigates Manhattan, we see her life and the lives around her, culminating in a portrait of New York City and its world of haves and have-nots. Free Food for Millionaires offers up a fresh exploration of the complex layers we inhabit both in society and within ourselves. Inspired by nineteenth-century novels such as Vanity Fair and Middlemarch, Min Jin Lee examines maintaining one's identity within changing communities in what is her remarkably assured debut.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 5, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400124602
      • File size: 574127 KB
      • Duration: 19:56:05

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      When the listener learns that Korean-American Casey Han carries a copy of George Eliot's MIDDLEMARCH around in her bag, it become clear that this is more than "chick lit" about a career girl in the big city. Suddenly, the jobs, clothes, and lifestyle Casey craves represent issues of class and assimilation. Shelly Frasier's adept reading of this thoughtful audiobook eloquently raises questions about American social strata much in the way Eliot's work did in nineteenth-century England. Casey is a well-educated girl from a modest immigrant family who is constantly aware of the cultural differences that comprise her life. Frasier keeps Casey honest with her no-nonsense performance. L.B.F. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 22, 2007
      In her noteworthy debut, Lee filters through a lively postfeminist perspective a tale of first-generation immigrants stuck between stodgy parents and the hip new world. Lee's heroine, 22-year-old Casey Han, graduates magna cum laude in economics from Princeton with a taste for expensive clothes and an "enviable golf handicap," but hasn't found a "real" job yet, so her father kicks her out of his house. She heads to her white boyfriend's apartment only to find him in bed with two sorority girls. Next stop: running up her credit card at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City. Casey's luck turns after a chance encounter with Ella Shim, an old acquaintance. Ella gives Casey a place to stay, while Ella's fiancé gets Casey a "low pay, high abuse" job at his investment firm and Ella's cousin Unu becomes Casey's new romance. Lee creates a large canvas, following Casey as she shifts between jobs, careers, friends, mentors and lovers; Ella and Ted as they hit a blazingly rocky patch; and Casey's mother, Leah, as she belatedly discovers her own talents and desires. Though a first-novel timidity sometimes weakens the narrative, Lee's take on contemporary intergenerational cultural friction is wide-ranging, sympathetic and well worth reading.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Jennifer Sun Bell narrates this early novel by PACHINKO author Min Jin Lee. It's the story of Casey, a young Korean American woman who is striving to make her mark in New York City's wealthy financial sector. Bell does a proficient job narrating Casey's coming-of-age story; however, while she captures Casey's youthful spirit, her voice lacks the gravitas needed to animate the darker dimensions of Casey's journey to adulthood: an abusive father, a secret white boyfriend, and various small crimes she's compelled to commit. That said, fans of PACHINKO will find much to enjoy in Lee's early writing and Bell's narration. D.G. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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