"A marvelous page-turner, with well-burnished subplots, this novel gives the 21st Century what the 19th Century knew we needed most"
– Diane Middlebrook, Anne Sexton and Her Husband
News & Media
Reviews & Comments | May 09, 2007
Interview at “Living Read Girl”
“Question: Free Food for Millionaires is structured like a 19th Century novel. What is it about that style of writing that appeals to you?”
“Answer: ...By comparison, I take comfort in the rules of a sonnet—the number of lines, the kinds of rhyme, the type of sonnets (Petrachan, Spenserian…) and the infinite variety of poems that can be written within the narrow rules of a form. I have studied the techniques of traditional story telling in the hopes of making the story almost easy to read. I worry obsessively about technique and tools and demand a great deal from each placement and change of word or idea, but I think when a reader picks up my book, she should never have to think about any of this.”
Reviews | April 25, 2007
USA Today
Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee may be the right book at the right time. It’s a first novel that, through sheer coincidence, opens a door onto the ...
Link » USA Today
Excerpts | April 24, 2007
USA Today
As a capable young woman, Casey Han felt compelled to choose respectability and success. But it was glamour and insight that she craved. ...
Link » USA Today
Reviews & Comments | April 23, 2007
“Living Read Girl” on Free Food For Millionaires
Living Read Girl has this to say about Free Food For Millionaires:
This is Min Jin Lee’s first novel and I have to say, this doesn’t read like one at all. FFFM reads more like the work of a seasoned pro at the top of her game. If you’re looking for a smart, clever and engaging novel,Free Food For Millionaires is your Golden Ticket, folks.
Reading | April 19, 2007
A Poem by Wallace Stevens
It is my hope that every month or so, I will post1 a poem I admire.
This one is by Wallace Stevens, and it has been a consolation to me at different moments in my life.
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
Light the first light of evening
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one…
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
1 I have done this without permission, and I apologize to his estate. If the estate objects, I’d be happy to remove it from the site. My original thinking about the blog was that if anyone had gone through the trouble of looking at the site and stumbled across this work, perhaps he or she might like this, too. Perhaps, dear reader, you would consider getting a copy of it at your favorite bookshop. The edition I like is: Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose (Library of America).
Reviews & Comments | April 16, 2007
The Bellow-Roth Equation
Michael Scharf writing about Free Food for Millionaires in Publisher’s Weekly:
Lee’s book is actually a lot more ambitious than Goodbye, Columbus (1959). The protagonist is a Korean-American woman named Casey Han, who is the Ivy-educated, “unusually tall” first daughter of a Queens emigré couple, husband-and-wife managers of a Manhattan dry cleaning franchise. (Managers, not owners. One of the things that’s so impressive about the book is the deft detail it goes into on such matters as how Korean owners of dry cleaning concerns hook, and keep, such couples as the Hans—down to the differences in pay between husband and wife, and how much of that money is kept on and off the books.) The book focuses on Casey’s post-collegiate path in the wake of being disowned, but its scope is kaleidoscopic, and its scale is (as also promised on the back cover) very 19th century, with Lee flashing in and out of the heads of a very large cast.
Read the rest at Publisher’s Weekly
Elisabeth Egan, Self, Contributing Books Editor
“Free Food for Millionaires is the best novel I’ve read in a long time. I’m sad to be finished and I desperately miss Casey Han - a perfectly imperfect character whose loyalty, chutzpah and great hats make her someone I wish I knew in real life.”
– Elisabeth Egan, Self, Contributing Books Editor
Carla Cohen, Politics and Prose
“Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee is an extraordinary book: totally engrossing, empathetic, realistic, romantic. Where did Min Jin Lee come from? How come she knows so much about people? How did she learn to write so well.”
– Carla Cohen, Politics and Prose
Interviews | March 29, 2007
Washington Post
When a 22-year-old Princeton grad takes too long to find a job, her dad sends her packing. ...
Link » Washington Post
Interviews | January 23, 2007
Springing Forward: Fiction/First Novels & Collections
The daughter of Korean immigrants navigates the Manhattan world of haves and have-nots.
– Publishers Weekly
- © 2012 Min Jin Lee
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