Red string of fate haunts 3 generations

“Diamond Head”
Cecily Wong
HarperCollins, $25.99

Review by Janine Oshiro
Special to the Star-Advertiser

According to Chinese legend, a red string binds destined lovers to each other. But as they bumble about, making mistakes and problematic choices at every turn, the unbreakable string tangles into pernicious knots that eventually pass to the next generation.

A similarly adamantine string may bind Cecily Wong, an emerging writer of Chinese-American descent, to literary success with her debut novel, “Diamond Head.” A saga of one family’s rise to and fall from power, it is told from multiple perspectives that slowly reveal the secrets and motivations driving, destroying or uniting characters. Spanning the Boxer Rebellion in China to the bombing of Pearl Harbor to 1960s Oahu, it jumps back and forth in time to heighten narrative suspense, and at its core unspools the legend of the red string of fate.

In other words, this ambitious novel is destined to tug its way into your summer book group — despite a few knots along the way.

The 1964 funeral of Bohai Leong, son of shipping industrialist Frank Leong, serves as the novel’s frame. Nine of the ten chapters begin with scenes from Bohai’s funeral and then move into flashbacks narrated by one of four women in the fallen family: Amy, Bohai’s wife, whose rags-to-riches fairy tale has veered off course; Theresa, Amy and Bohai’s pregnant teenage daughter; Lin, Frank’s widow and Bohai’s mother, who has retreated into her own world since Frank’s unsolved murder; and Hong, Frank’s brother’s widow.

Before the funeral, Theresa makes an observation about her unstable grandmother that can as easily apply to the novel as a whole: “How strange, Theresa thinks. How remarkable, how terrifying that a lifetime can hold this much change, can stretch to this level of distortion.”

The Leong family’s story is compelling. However, the two-part structure of each chapter starts to feel mechanical, and the exploration of the themes of destiny, free will, sacrifice and love gets formulaic at times.

Near the end, a secret letter from Amy’s past love life suddenly comes to light. Overexposition condenses important events in the last chapter, and the final moments verge on the trite and unbelievable.

Most readers would gladly have followed Wong’s deft prose into riskier and subtler territory for keener emotional insight into the characters. Still, “Diamond Head” is an engaging and entertaining novel and a promising debut.