Paper Names

December 1, 2022

Chinese-born engineer Tony, now a Manhattan doorman. Tony's first-generation daughter, Tammy, caught between her dreams and her family's ambitions for her. And Oliver, a handsome white lawyer in Tony's building contending with his family's troubled past. As their stories unfold over three decades, they are brought together by a terrible act of violence. Luo debuts with a 100,000-copy first printing.

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April 1, 2023
An ambitious debut novel that follows a Chinese immigrant, his daughter, and a White lawyer over three decades. Tony Zhang is a quick-tempered engineer from Dalian who uproots his life in China and moves with his wife and daughter to New York in search of a better future. He finds work as a handyman at The Rosewood, a fancy apartment building, where Oliver, a handsome lawyer at a white-shoe firm with a dark family history, resides. The novel opens in 1997, when a violent incident brings Oliver into the lives of the Zhangs. Told in alternating perspectives--those of Tony; his daughter, Tammy; and Oliver--the novel reprises staple themes of Asian American fiction: generational differences, anti-Asian racism, the dogged pursuit of the American dream, and the challenges of dating across racial lines. As the novel progresses, Tony lands a job at an engineering firm and moves up its ranks, Tammy grows up to become a Harvard-educated, headstrong young lawyer, and Oliver becomes the youngest partner at his firm. The prose is at times bogged down with exposition; lengthy internal dialogue often unnecessarily supplements direct speech. The characters also verge on caricatures (that an attractive White lawyer from a wealthy background is conceited and cowardly is surely no surprise to anyone, nor is the trope of him being changed by his acquaintance with a young woman from a working-class family). But the plot is propulsive, prompting the reader to keep turning the pages, and the novel as a whole is undeniably enjoyable. An entertaining and touching debut from a new voice in Chinese American literature.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 15, 2023
When Tony came to America, his friends in China wondered why. As a top engineer in his home country, he was already successful. In New York City, Tony started from the bottom, working as a doorman in an upscale apartment building. He learned English and pursued new opportunities, sometimes to the detriment of his wife and daughter, Tammy. A mugging in front of the building leads Tony to rescue a wealthy resident, and a passerby jumps in to help. Oliver, a lawyer, is hiding from his past as the grandson of a notorious embezzler. He's changed his name but is still living on family money. As the story jumps back and forth in time from the '90s to the 2000s, the reader watches each character grow as they interact with each other. Oliver battles his demons as he grows closer to Tammy. Tony's perspective illustrates his unique immigrant experience while Tammy struggles with her heritage and her relationship with her father. This powerful novel will appeal to readers of Rootless, by Krystle Zara Appiah (2023). HIGH DEMAND BACKSTORY: This powerful debut has a large print run and is poised to make waves with the book club set.

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