THE TIGER MOM'S TALE

Butler's debut novel delves into a biracial Taiwanese American woman's complicated family relations.

Protagonist Lexa, a 30-something physical trainer in New York City, is building her client list and looking for love at the novel's start. She's estranged from her biological father in Taiwan, and the White side of her family has fallen into conflict. Her White American mother has left Lexa's stepfather for a woman, and Lexa's bigoted sister is acting out. Then Lexa discovers her father, Jing Tao, has died, and her Taiwanese half sister, Hsu-Ling, is flying to New York to hand-deliver an important letter about her inheritance. Melodramatic plot twists pile on with lightning speed, but a dinner scene in which Lexa and her two half sisters confront a White man with "yellow fever," intent on objectifying Asian women, is hilarious. Other plot points suffer from a reliance on stereotypes. The central mystery of the novel, the cause of Lexa's estrangement from her biological father, is unfortunately predicated on a misogynist and racist caricature. Jing Tao's wife, Pin-Yen, is literally referred to as a Tiger Mom and is characterized in broad strokes: She forces piano lessons on her own daughter and pushes for academic success. Pin-Yen commits truly egregious acts of cruelty against the 14-year-old Lexa, but her cartoonish villainy undermines the book. If Jing Tao is truly the enlightened, loving man the reader is told he is, what would have sustained his marriage to a woman so monstrous? Why can't he and his wife communicate with each other like adults? That Jing Tao never noticed his wife's manipulations is a convenient plot device that reveals how underwritten he is as a character. The novel is trying for a breezy, sometimes-comical, sometimes-sentimental depiction of family and heritage, but such paper-thin characterizations undermine its own good intention.

Family drama cannot transcend soap-operatic plot twists and too-easy resolutions.