Fiona and Jane

Fiona and Jane
Fiona and Jane are two Taiwanese American women who have been friends since their childhood in Los Angeles. Jane never leaves, staying in LA to grieve her father and try to find her footing. Fiona moves to New York to pursue her ambitions--and fumble through several destructive relationships. Through their life changes, Fiona and Jane's friendship ebbs and flows, but they always find their way back to one another.

I love stories of friendship and while this book had some poignant moments--especially related to Jane's father--I struggled to feel the pull of Fiona and Jane to one another. The alternating vignettes often had the two apart, and the ones with them together just didn't reinforce their bond for me. This had a solid foundation, but I wished it would have been built out a bit more.

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About the Book

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Publisher’s Description

Best friends since second grade, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen explore the lonely freeways and seedy bars of Los Angeles together through their teenage years, surviving unfulfilling romantic encounters, and carrying with them the scars of their families’ tumultuous pasts. Fiona was always destined to leave, her effortless beauty burnished by fierce ambition–qualities that Jane admired and feared in equal measure. When Fiona moves to New York and cares for a sick friend through a breakup with an opportunistic boyfriend, Jane remains in California and grieves her estranged father’s sudden death, in the process alienating an overzealous girlfriend. Strained by distance and unintended betrayals, the women float in and out of each other’s lives, their friendship both a beacon of home and a reminder of all they’ve lost.

In stories told in alternating voices, Jean Chen Ho’s debut collection peels back the layers of female friendship–the intensity, resentment, and boundless love–to probe the beating hearts of young women coming to terms with themselves, and each other, in light of the insecurities and shame that holds them back.

Spanning countries and selves, Fiona and Jane is an intimate portrait of a friendship, a deep dive into the universal perplexities of being young and alive, and a bracingly honest account of two Asian women who dare to stake a claim on joy in a changing, contemporary America.

Details
Author: Jean Chen Ho
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Fiction
Publisher: Viking
Publication Year: 2022
ASIN: B08XNBGJXP
ISBN: 9780593296042
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