The Foreigner

by Francie Lin

Emerson Chang is a mild mannered bachelor on the cusp of forty, a financial analyst in a neatly pressed suit, a child of Taiwanese immigrants who doesn't speak a word of Chinese, and, well, a virgin. His only real family is his mother, whose subtle manipulations have kept him close--all in the name of preserving an obscure idea of family and culture.

But when his mother suddenly dies, Emerson sets out for Taipei to scatter her ashes, and to convey a surprising inheritance to his younger brother, Little P. Now enmeshed in the Taiwanese criminal underworld, Little P seems to be running some very shady business out of his uncle's karaoke bar, and he conceals a secret--a crime that has not only severed him from his family, but may have annihilated his conscience. Hoping to appease both the living and the dead, Emerson isn't about to give up the inheritance until he uncovers Little P's past, and saves what is left of his family.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, China, Asia, Mystery Thriller, Thriller, Novels

309 pages, Paperback

First published May 27, 2008

Reviews

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a story of a 40-year old virgin who lives in San Francisco and crosses the Bay Bridge and down I-880 every Friday night to have dinner with his mother. I was thinking, damn this coulda been me. Mother dies, son goes to Taiwan with will in hand searching for his missing younger brother. Turns out bro is a gangster. Some pretty bad writing ensues. I had to give it the biased three stars for the following reason -- there aren't that many people writing about male Taiwanese Americans who spend time in the Taipei underworld. Francie Lin went to Harvard, got a Fullbright which she spent in Taiwan and is very young, probably early 30's. The novel is also informed as a travel guide as to what Taiwanese culture has to offer, for example:

Taiwan Beer; guava;
The Taipei train station: "Inside the ticket hall, the placards on the enormous timetable shifted at intervals like blinking eyes."
the night markets; karaoke.

And the cover art is the best I've seen in a long, long time. Red landterns swaying from the awnings of a warehouse, brilliant.

One last thought -- what's with Asian-American writers' obssession and particularly Chinese-American writers who choose or are forced to name their books in a way that call attention to race/outsider status? I would like a hugely talented writer one day to not name their book "Yellow Foreign Dragon Bowl of Rice Tea Lantern China Red." The equivalent in film is Ang Lee who has directed Ice Storm, Hulk, Brokeback, Crouching Tiger, Lust, Caution, and Eat Drink Man Woman, seven very different movies. We need a post-partisan Obama guy or girl who is not afraid to name their books appropriately.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

UPDATE: Not sure why I decided to reread this, but glad I did. I am surprised the book hasn't gotten better reader reviews, so I'm upping my review to 5 stars just to boost her overall score. I agree with some of the comments that the narrator is a weak and frustrating (if not downright unsympathetic) character; but that may well have been intentional - not all protagonists need to be heroes. Overall, Lin is an extremely gifted and evocative writer; and so I hope she's toiling away on a second book somewhere, as I'd really like read more from her, (The Foreigner came out in 2008, and she hasn't published anything since which is really a shame).

In particular, I liked her "throwaway" use of insider details about Taipei that really made the story ring true - ICRT, candied tomatoes, The China Post vs. The Taipei Times, "the Zone," paddleboating in Xindian...these are either references you understand or don't, but she wisely doesn't explain any of them; she's writing a thriller after all, not a travel guide.

ORIGINAL 2011 REVIEW: I spent over eighteen years living in Taiwan, but looks like there's a whole other side to the place I never got to see before. While I'd heard about the drugs gangs and criminal underworld, this book gave me my first real look at Taipei's dirty underbelly. This book is definitely not for everyone, but if you like China-based fiction (or at least Republic of China-based), this was a fascinating and fairly non-traditional read. Not a perfect book by any means - I found the ending in particular kind of far-fetched and inconsistent with what came before - but for a debut novel, I was really impressed.

[Jennie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It has been some time since I read a book and cared less about the main character. I finished reading this because I kept waiting for the story to surprise me, or for the main character to get a clue.

Unfortunately, Emerson was one dimensional throughout the entire story. Most main characters are torn, or conflicted about their past. Not this guy, he's a self deluding "paragon of virtue" sitting on his high horse passively judging the rest of the world. Basically, he bored me. Francie Lin couldn't even write him as an interesting morally superior person, Emerson is just someone too afraid to live.

The story wasn't really flushed out enough for me. At least the back story wasn't. You never really get information on what Little P and Emerson's relationship was before Little P left. You don't know how old Little P is or what the circumstances were of his leaving (other than that his mom pounded on the cab window).

The only thing that I felt this story did do right was describe. I felt like I was actually in Taiwan, I got a good sense of the locations that the book is set in.

Its not a bad book, its just not a good one either...

[CarolineFromConcord · Rating 1 out of 5]

Although the author writes excellent, evocative descriptions of scenes, her characters made no sense to me, the plot was a series of dangling teasers, and there were weird failures to pay attention to detail. (With regard to the latter, after a character has made a big point of bolting the door, several people sashay through it a few minutes later.) The hero is a cypher, a middle-aged Chinese American so devoted to his mother that he carries her ashes in a shoulder bag wherever he goes and finds it impossible to relate to women -- or anyone. Despite a thousand indications that his brother is a criminal who cares nothing for him,he refuses to admit the evidence of his eyes and ears and batterings until the end -- and even then thinks he has a deep bond with this loser. I do not think this author should be writing mysteries but should instead use her obvious descriptive talents in another format. This is the second book in a week that I have seen a reviewer call "noir-ish." I think I will avoid the noir-ish genre henceforth.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not like this book and fail to see how it was nominated for an Edgar Award for the best first mystery novel.

The hero is manipulated by his mother for years. She arranges dates and discourages his dating non-Chinese women.

He seems to have no backbone and in not an interesting character.

When his mother dies, he goes overseas to find his brother, tell him the bad news about his mother and inform him that his mother left the family motel to the brother.

The brother is a non caring character who immediately decides to sell the family business. We find that the brother has problems of his own but do we really care? I didn't.

Not recommended.

[Mia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I should have read the reviews by my fellow readers at Goodreads before getting this book at the library. I never found the main character to be at all believable. And most of the other characters were equally weak and unlikely. There is not one good thing to say about the book. I didn’t even find the setting real. This is the worst book I have read this year

[Reid · Rating 2 out of 5]

What to say? For a first novel, this is fairly accomplished, a complete story without any gaping holes, a certain mastery of language. Am I damning this book with faint praise? I suppose so. In the first 20 pages or so, I really didn't think I would want to continue reading. There were so many cliches and obvious hooks, so many pat plot devices (the loyal son versus the missing son, the overweening mother, the diffidence of the immigrant, the return to the homeland) that my eyes rolled rather frequently, but eventually I did become hooked in the relationships and the story. I did appreciate the author making her protagonist a true anti-hero, a man just like you or me (if a bit more of a nebbish), facing an impossible situation in a strange land and doing so with fear, trepidation, confusion, and anger, not with bravado or pride or fierceness. Whether we like it or not, each of us are much more likely to cower than play Rambo when faced with evil and violence, and it is refreshing to see such a character in modern fiction.

But is this a good book? No, it's not, but it does show the promise of a writer who is young yet and has a solid beginning; here's hoping she finds something worthy of her skills that she can make into a truly good novel.

[Jankerr · Rating 1 out of 5]

Guess my Chinese genre books have been jaded by Any Tan or Pearl Buck. This book was not good. It failed on about every level from one dimensional characters to a bogus plot. Why take almost all the book to tell us they are dealing in human trafficing but pretty much spell it out in the first chapter. Oh brother. The one thing I did like was the descriptions of Taiwain and the relationship to mainland China. The plot, the characters left a lot to be deisred

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Imagine the most incredibly depressing book ever. This would be it.

It's a story of a man whose mother died and he travels back to his homeland of Taiwan to meet up with his brother to settle the will of his mother.

He arrives and find out what his brother has been doing with his life. As the plot continues the story just keeps getting more and more depressing until a final "boom" at the end makes it slightly less depressing.

I wouldn't recommend it or read it again.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty damn fine first novel. sure there are some weak spots with the a touch of magical at the end, and a not so convincing description of usa bay area asian american experience, BUT the gritty and forbidding (and forboding) taipei neighborhood, his looser/gangster brother, and the tough as nails sidekick as all a kick. check out francie lin

[Kathryn · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book received the 2009 Edgar Award for best first mystery. The other contenders must have been totally without merit because there was nothing terribly mysterious about Francie Lin's plot or characters. I did appreciate glimpsing Taipei but probably only because I have a couple of Taiwanese friends.

[Monica Copeland · Rating 1 out of 5]

I see what the author was going for, that general feeling of disembodiment and mysterious confusion in a place new but part of your past. But, it was mostly a let-down, and I found myself more and more annoyed by the naive fumblings of the narrator.

[Vanessa Hua · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lyrical, beautifully written thriller that rethinks the "ABC assimilation return to homeland" story. Some women show up in Taiwan that are a bit too much of deux ex machina, but then again, there's that Chinese saying "If there were no coincidences, there'd be no stories."

[Bill Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Francie Lin hits a lot a major themes in this novel, love, family, honor, the past, the future, heaven and hell… but, is it a mystery? It's a mystery in the sense that there are crimes and criminals and even a car chase down a highway in Taiwan. But as for mystery… I find it to be a mystery only in so far and there are things unknown, hidden things, but any story really takes time to unfold. You really don't get the full picture of a character in a novel all up front… it rolls out over time.

And in The Foreigner, the 'mysterious' past is only 'mysterious' because it hasn't unfolded yet."

As the story unfolds, Emerson, an eldest son who is close to his immigrant Chinese mother in America is thrust into a journey back to his mother's home in Taiwan after her death of natural causes. There he must find his younger brother who's cut ties with them years before in order to settle the estate.

Upon finding his brother 'Little P', Emerson is drawn into a murky criminal underworld whose dealings are centered around their uncle's karaoke bar called the Palace.

A keeper of a shared past. That's how Emerson views his younger brother. Now that thier mother, his mother, has past away Little P is the only one left to validate his memories as he comes to see things.

Having recently lost a parent myself, this thought had a eureka moment for me as I now see my own younger siblings as sojourners traveling on towards the end of days. Siblings, they are the only ones who really knew you when...

Emerson finds Little P in business with Uncle, and two cousins named Poison and Big One. And while Emerson seeks to extricate his brother from the seedy noir world in which he is erythromycin much a Foreigner, he encounters two young women, Angel and Grace. With the help of a friend and compatriot of Uncle named Atticus Emerson hopes to learn some of the things about Little P's life here in Taiwan that he brother chooses not to talk about.

Yes, it has occurred to me that there is more to the naming of these characters than meets the eye, and I wish I had a better recollection of To Kill A Mockingbird than I do because, although Emerson is about forty years old in this story, it's really his coming of age story... he may just be the Scout in this journey of discovery.

[rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like a bit of a jerk rating this one low, because 1.) this is probably the first book I've ever read that is set in Taiwan, and I enjoyed imagining a place I'd never "been" before, and 2.) I think Francie Lin's overarching motif of her late blooming, sheltered narrator Emerson Chang grappling with the ties that hold him to his non-starter past is compelling. But, some of the action scenes feel rushed and thus, confused. Also, characters make really weird, illogical decisions that don't make sense given what they know. (For example, Emerson's reporter friend is suspicious by nature, but the day she turns an organized crime ring in to the crooked police, she lazily hangs around watching TV and is actually surprised when someone comes after her in her house, where, I repeat, she is just hanging out like usual. Really?)

Also, it frustrated me to no end that as Emerson is trying to figure out what illegal activities his little brother, Little P, is involved in, he is tipped off to check out the maid and somehow doesn't immediately suspect an illegal sex trade. At one point later in the story, he lists all of the vices he can think of and prostitution doesn't even make the list. Look, I know he is a 40 year old virgin and all, but if someone were to say to me, "hey, the live-in servile woman in the house is a major clue as to what's going on here"...an illegal sex trade? LITERALLY THE FIRST THING I WOULD SUSPECT. It takes Emerson far too much time to figure it out.

[Julianne · Rating 1 out of 5]

This novel piled on trope after trope, twist after twist, random subplot after random subplot, and was eventually smothered. The same scene seemed to recur—a smoky/hazy/dark space where the narrator struggled to see, a character revealing critical information without provocation, someone abruptly walking away to avoid revealing something (only for them to quickly give in when followed). The violence committed defies my understanding of the human body (how is your face beaten in but you’re fine the next day? How is a businessman with no convenient fitness backstory able to rebound so quickly from serious physical exertion and/or injury?).

(Spoilers to follow.)

Characters—primarily women—are picked up and dropped, which is particularly upsetting given the catalyst for the relationship between these brothers is one of them trafficking women for sex. It’s just tired; it all felt tired. Whole plot points—specifically the Poison subplot which honestly made little sense to me anyway, as either a machination of Little P or just a thing to have happen—evaporated in the end, with the narrator stealing a woman’s intellectual property to bring down the trafficking ring on his own. Yes, she was going to give it up to avoid being shot, but WHY DOES HE THINK SHE WON’T BE FOUND OUT? The narrator seems to learn nothing, take no responsibility, and yet come out a hero.

Perhaps I’m being harsh; I did, after all, read the whole book. That means something kept me going. But in retrospect, I am not entirely sure what that would be.

[S · Rating 2 out of 5]

A frustrating read. Francie Lin is a good writer. The prose is on point, the details will sweep you away. However, the plot is thin and the conclusion is a disappointing payoff to what could have been a decent mystery. Emerson is a 40 year old virgin with mommy issues. When his mother dies, he's disappointed to learn that his mother left the family motel to his estranged brother who is caught up in some shady business in Taiwan. Emerson travels to Taiwan in search of his brother and deal with the years of pent up anger and disappointment. Similar to Ed Lin's Ghost Month, the book is a great vehicle to introduce Americans to Taiwan's history and current political climate. Also similar to Ed Lin's Ghost Month, the mystery is not so mysterious. The big reveal was obvious at the point when Emerson's brother was introduced. I kept reading, thinking there was a twist that never came. I hope author continues to write but in a different genre.

[Kathy Ding · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the synopsis and immediately thought of the Netflix series The Brothers Sun. But as you go through this book, it's less and less like the show and less and less likable in general. The action and reveal scenes are heavily disjointed, the events that happen and the character motivations are weakly described and wholly non-convincing. Emerson as a main character is still an empty mystery and you lose sympathy for him pretty quickly. Had high hopes for this one but was not as good or satisfying as Chinatown Interior.

[JDK1962 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not badly written, although the author has no gift for writing action scenes: the sense of where things are in physical space is never particularly strong. But the main flaw in the book is the first-person narrator: an emotionally stunted 40-year old who seems allows his beliefs about family and filial obeisance lead him into doing quite a lot of fairly stupid things. Not recommended.

[T · Rating 1 out of 5]

Emerson lives in California, meets his mother weekly for dinner. His younger brother is living in Asia, having escaped to see the world.

With his mother's passing, Emerson travels to Asia to find his brother, tend to his mother's wishes and ashes and will.

And finds his brother's life is not what they thought.

How can he repair the family, how can he get his brother back to the US?

[Betsy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I seriously hated the main character. I mean I hated him. That was my basic problem with the entire book and it kept me from enjoying it.

[Jennifer Tulloch]

My ratings were for The Foreigner by Stephen Leather.

[Morgan Vandermeers · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mir zu gritty.

[Fiona · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn´t care for this book. Why? I didn´t like the main character, Emerson, and I didn´t like the slow pace of the story until the very end. Also, the criminal underworld of Taiwan is seedy and dark.

Emerson Chang is of Taiwanese descent living in San Francisco. He is a momma´s boy at 40 years old. (Or, you can call it devoted to his mother). She dies. In her will she leaves the motel to his little brother, Little P, and some family property in Taipei to him. After 10 years not hearing from his brother, he searches Taipei for him. He finds him in the family karaoke bar but there´s more than karaoke going on in the bar. Then, he meets his counsins Poison and Big One. Perfect names for henchmen, right? Unfortunately, Emerson loses a lot of money in what he thought was a friendly game of Mah-Jong. Not only does he have to tell Little P and their mother´s death and will, he now has to find money to pay back his debt. Fortunately, he finds a friend in a local Taiwanese woman to help him navigate Taiwan and its criminal underworld.

Dark and depressing story.

[Wenting · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh wow, i'm surprised by how so many reviewers (or at least the first few i scrolled past) disliked this book. and its overall abysmal rating, perhaps the lowest of any book i've read/ liked. actually, i'm not surprised - if i didn't feel such direct empathy for that weasel of a main character emerson i'd have reacted similarly. (also, the writing is excellent). i can accept, even champion a lot of the cliches, etc because to me they all feel true. there are a lot of good sons/ bad sons dynamics in the culture i (somewhat peripherally) come from, especially as newer generations of children abut against the culture of the west. there is the mindset that you are bound to your parents, that their machinations are to be expected and humoured, and there are wayward children to be held up against those who do as their parents say, and there can be little satisfaction in either. one review unfavourably compares foreigner against writings of paragons amy tan and pearl s buck - which makes me think, i haven't read much asian-authored literature about asian experiences beyond acknowledged staples (chiefly, joy luck club as a sentimental teenager. buck, also not necessarily asian, seemed much too full of torturous yet dull suffering, at least at age thirteen). i haven't really been interested. this book was interesting - and has made me consciously seek out more.

the story: emerson chang is a milquetoast raised by a domineering mother who continues to shadow his life as he nears forty. the family business is a struggling wayside motel in california, the remada - a sly bastardization of "ramada" that exemplifies my own asian/western experience. the books opens with the remada's future thrown into unexpected doubt when chang's mother dies shortly after mother and son argue. the knife digs deeper when chang discovers his wayward, yet better-loved younger brother - long absent in taiwan for unexplained reasons - has been given the remada, while he is to recieve a property in taiwan. with a heart full of poor plotting, chang embarks on an ill-fated journey to taiwain to stake his own claim on the remada, possibly rescue his brother, feel and act a colossal fool in a foreign land where only his face belongs, and have his eyes pryed open about some extreme family history with the aid of a young taiwanese-american journalist. i was completely enthralled. also, minus twenty-odd years, filial obedience, and sordid family past (that i know of), i felt like i could be emerson. well, perhaps except for emerson's ending! where he, in a final act of misguided chivalry, steals the young journalist's photos, decides that she is better off without him, and leaves on a harebrained quest to pursue justice on his own, feeling like he is finally flying free or some such nonsense. what a completely stupid act of misogyny and paternalism - the misguidedness of which is not at all portrayed by the book.

[Juha · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a very frustrating book. The intercultural premise intrigued me—and the fact that it had won the Edgar Award—so I picked it up at the airport for a coast-to-coast flight. The book begins interestingly enough—and Francie Lin does write well—so it was not difficult to get started with it. But the further I read, the less I liked it. There are just too many annoying factors. First, there are so many inconsistencies and the entire story is less than credible that the praise it has received is quite surprising. In particular, I found it baffling that this has been touted as a mystery. It does have a criminal plot that allows the author to explore whatever themes—moral issues, cultural differences, filial piety—that she wants to, but the actual criminal plot is, while perhaps realistic, quite simple; mystery it is not. The characters constantly behave and communicate in illogical ways. Lin also brings in a couple of subplots that hardly add to the story, notably the topic of Taiwanese politics regarding independence from mainland China, which she deals with through one of the main characters with whom the hapless protagonist engages in inconclusive dialogue. Then there are the gratuitous descriptions of odd Chinese ways, like gambling over a scorpion duel, that she has added, presumably for local color. One frequently gets the impression that things have been included in the book because Lin couldn't resist using things that she herself had found intriguing when she spent time in Taiwan on a Fulbright. The descriptions of the country and the city of Taipei are rather atmospheric, per se, and Lin does raise some pointed issues (such as the many Western men who travel to the East in search of something spiritual—or local women, mostly). The most off-putting aspect of the book, though, is the protagonist himself, who in his naïveté, arrogance and selfishness is so entirely unlikeable that I kept turning the pages just in the hope that something bad would happen to him. All in all, given Lin’s clear literary talent and often interesting observations about Taiwan, the book was an unfortunate disappointment to me.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story about 40-year old Emerson, still a virgin and having weekly Friday night dinners with his overbearing mother. As he fulfills his familial obligations, Emerson recounts his childhood, including losing his father at age 11, and his relationship with his mother laden with awkward sexual undertones. Emerson's younger brother, Little P, fled back to Taipain 10 years earlier with little to no contact since. Emerson decides to return to his homeland to find his brother and potentially reconnect with the brother he was once so close to. When we're first introduced to Little P, he is described as "wolfish." His behavior suggests that of a drug addict, and it is clear from everyone's statements about him that he is involved in unsavory activity (clear to everyone except Emerson, of course). He hints at a "secret" and makes underhandeded comments about his mother and Emerson's relationship with her. I started reading this book on the bus on my way in to work, and found myself wishing I could take the rest of the day off to finish it. But, as Emerson delved deeper into Taiwain's seedy-underbelly, it took a turn that I could not quite relate to - but, I did appreciate the juxtaposition of the two brothers who come from the same home, but end up in two vastly different life situations - one so paralyzed by his obligations that he is unable to develop personal relationships of his own, and the other driven so far from acceptable society that he becomes a shadow in the city sewers. Parts of this book felt a bit too sensationalized or written for the screen, but ultimately, it was an engaging read about finding yourself in a world where you are constantly defined by others.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Foreigner, by Francie Lin, we meet Emerson Chang. A forty year old bachelor who leads a less than exciting life in his stuffy pressed suits as a financial analyst. His world is flipped upside down by the death of his mother, which leads him to a completely life changing adventure of sorts to Taipei to settle the inheritance of his mysteriously crooked younger brother; Little P.
The way this story is written alone is well worth the read. Filled with characters you may never want to come across in real life, Emerson struggles with a fear he harbors for his little brother who he believes has been roped in to a criminal underworld - but to what extent he is completely clueless. While there, he makes valuable unexpected friends and finds things out about his brother's dealings and everyday life that I didn't even guess were coming. By the end of this book you may be as shocked as I was at how Emerson's fight to save what was left of his family had drastically changed along with his life in general.

The Foreigner unfolds a highly amusing and sometimes funny page turning road of self discovery and shocking secrets and truths.

[Rogue Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Foreigner won a well-deserved Edgar for the Best First Novel in 2008. It's the story of Emerson Chang, a mild-mannered, passive, dutiful son of his stick figure mother. The mother dies, and as executor, Emerson seeks out his black sheep brother in Taiwan to put her ashes to rest and turn over an inheritance.

There's an ugly stench of decay and deceit in every place and every exchange that Emerson has in Taiwan. It's only the unrequited love of an American Chinese woman who saves his life, time and again. Despite violence, corruption and abuse, Emerson never loses faith or hope, or his mother's ashes. There's an until, of course, but I'll leave that for the reader.

So far it looks like The Foreigner is Francie Lin's only book, and here's hoping that there's more. I'd love to see Emerson Chang return to Taiwan, and get his revenge.

--Ashland Mystery

[Tara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an OK read. Despite the terrible reviews I still decided to delve into the "criminal" side of Taiwan with the help of Francie. Since living in Taiwan I've never come across a fictional book based here, so I was intrigued. I do think Lin gave nice insight and descriptions of Taipei but for me the praise stops there.

The whole situation that Emerson gets himself involved in is slightly unbelievable yet extremely predictable at the same time. Throughout the whole book I was waiting for that 'Aha!" moment, but never got there. The final scene with the stormy weather and rickety bridge was quite original though.

It's a decent first novel and I'm not saying I could do better but character development and an original plot line was definitely lacking. The setting bumped my rating to 3 stars. And while it was the recipient of the 2009 'Edgar Award' at the end of the day, I'm not quite sure who Edgar is and if he should be shelling out awards.