A Review of Mary H.K. Choi’s Permanent Record (Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2019).

Posted by: lesliejfernandez

A Review of Mary H.K. Choi’s Permanent Record (Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn


 
I was a big fan of Mary H.K. Choi’s debut novel, Emergency Contact, so I was definitely looking forward to Permanent Record (Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2019). Let’s let the official S&S page give us some background information on the novel: On paper, college dropout Pablo [Neruda] Rind doesn’t have a whole lot going for him. His graveyard shift at a twenty-four-hour deli in Brooklyn is a struggle. Plus, he’s up to his eyeballs in credit card debt. Never mind the state of his student loans. Pop juggernaut Leanna Smart has enough social media followers to populate whole continents. The brand is unstoppable. She graduated from child stardom to become an international icon and her adult life is a queasy blur of private planes, step-and-repeats, aspirational hotel rooms, and strangers screaming for her just to notice them. When Leanna and Pablo meet at 5:00 a.m. at the bodega in the dead of winter it’s absurd to think they’d be A Thing. But as they discover who they are, who they want to be, and how to defy the deafening expectations of everyone else, Lee and Pab turn to each other. Which, of course, is when things get properly complicated.” Ethnicity and race always have a huge part in Choi’s novels so it’s important to lay out that Pablo is Pakistani Korean -American, while Leanna is a mixed race Chicanx character.

The premise of the novel is perhaps the classic rom-com set up: two wildly different characters are thrust together at a strange moment, the meet-cute, in which they discover sparks for each other. In this particular case, it’s the bodega in which Pablo works. These two characters are on opposite sides of the economic and social spectrum. Everyone knows who Leanna Smart is, and she’s mega-rich on top of it. While Pablo has an intimate circle of friends, he has been listlessly living his life after dropping out of NYU. I have to admit, when I first saw these two get together, I didn’t imagine this romance lasting long at all—so now I’ll provide my requisite spoiler warning, as I will be giving away precious details concerning the conclusion—thus, I wasn’t surprised when this relationship wasn’t going to work out.

What I appreciated about this particular relationship is that Choi makes it clear why they were never a good fit: Pablo’s got a very idealized notion of love, even as he can’t be honest about the way he feels about Leanna nor about the fact that he feels like a failure. Leanna herself lives a life that is constructed through surfaces and illusions, so when Pablo’s so-called authenticity is put into question, you can’t help but know that the relationship will soon go the way of dinosaurs. Despite the mismatch, what Choi knows about these characters is that they’re both frightfully smart and witty. In this sense, they get along on a certain level that sustains them for a good period of time. I did find that the novel tended to be a bit overlong, but I suppose my response was more from the perspective of the readerly skeptic: I never expected nor desired this relationship to last haha. In any case, despite these personal feelings, Choi always put her A+ game into the creation of the dynamics between these two characters. The conclusion is particularly strong, as Choi refuses the sentimental tropes that might have plagued a similar type young adult narrative.
 
Buy the Book Here!

Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Leslie J. Fernandez, PhD Student in English, at lfern010@ucr.edu

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