This book seemed to me, like a mashup of two separate stories – both starring the same protagonist, but in very different settings and genres. One of them I was enjoying very much initially but by the end, it was definitely heading off the rails. The other started off fairly nondescript, but then started to find its mojo, and I ended up liking that one very much. Weird.
Our hero, Tiller, is a bored college student from New Jersey. He gets swept up by a Chinese businessman, the boisterous and wealthy Pong Lou, on a trip to Asia, to be taught the ways of the world. Tiller, who is of Chinese/white heritage, is normally perceived as white back home, but his current comrades know better. And it turns out that he had a hidden ability of which he had been unaware – he is a standout karaoke singer, a talent that comes in most handy. The trip gets wilder and wilder, but Tiller is holding his own.
But interspersed with these adventures is Tiller’s life once he is back in the states. He falls in love with Val, a somewhat older women who is in a witness protection program, along with her adolescent son, Victor Jr., AKA VeeJ, my favorite character in the book. VeeJ starts off as a typical chonky and rather sullen gamer, but then one day! The threesome sign up for a family cooking class at the YMCA in their small New England village. The instructor, a <i> tiny elegant older lady from Thailand</i>, prepares to teach them how to make an authentic three course Thai meal. <i> you would think Victor Jr, aka Sir Chicken Nugget, would pinch his nose and beg to flee from the intense fragrances, . . .but he got kind of loopy while taking fierce sniffs of the lemongrass, the spiky purple basil, the homemade curry paste</i>, in other words he is hooked and quickly, with the help of You Tube, becomes a master chef of all manner of cuisines. His life now revolves around this, and co-opting Tiller and his mom as sous-chefs, he is soon producing resplendent feasts (there is the help of a magical inexhaustible credit card) for a backyard pop-up for the entire neighborhood, entirely free of charge.
The Pong plot gets a little weird by the end, but I loved the teen Bobby Flay bit. That kid can move down the street from me any day.
