The Nature of Things

The Wangs vs. the World is Jade Chang's debut novel. I think she has a future in fiction-writing. Chang tells us the story of a family whose financial security was ruined by the crash of 2008. They were a wealthy California family living the good life, never questioning the privileges which they enjoyed. Through a series of very bad decisions made by the patriarch of the family, Charles Wang, the family lost everything. Their palatial home, their cars, their bank accounts, the son's college career - all gone in the virtual blink of an eye. It could be the story of any one of many families who suffered through that precarious period of the world's financial systems and came out the other side much poorer and perhaps wiser than they went in. But this is a very particular story of a particular family. It is a family headed by immigrants. Charles and Barbra Wang are originally from Taiwan, where their own families of origin had been pushed by the Japanese or the Chinese Commun...