#BlogTour ‘White Ivy’ by Susie Yang

About the book…

“A truly addictive read” (Glamour) about how a young woman’s crush on a privileged former classmate becomes a story of love, lies, and dark obsession, offering stark insights into the immigrant experience, as it hurtles to its electrifying ending in this “twisty, unputdownable, psychological thriller” (People).

Ivy Lin is a thief and a liar—but you’d never know it by looking at her.

Raised outside of Boston, Ivy’s immigrant grandmother relies on Ivy’s mild appearance for cover as she teaches her granddaughter how to pilfer items from yard sales and second-hand shops. Thieving allows Ivy to accumulate the trappings of a suburban teen—and, most importantly, to attract the attention of Gideon Speyer, the golden boy of a wealthy political family. But when Ivy’s mother discovers her trespasses, punishment is swift and Ivy is sent to China, and her dream instantly evaporates.

Years later, Ivy has grown into a poised yet restless young woman, haunted by her conflicting feelings about her upbringing and her family. Back in Boston, when Ivy bumps into Sylvia Speyer, Gideon’s sister, a reconnection with Gideon seems not only inevitable—it feels like fate.

Slowly, Ivy sinks her claws into Gideon and the entire Speyer clan by attending fancy dinners, and weekend getaways to the cape. But just as Ivy is about to have everything she’s ever wanted, a ghost from her past resurfaces, threatening the nearly perfect life she’s worked so hard to build.

Filled with surprising twists and a nuanced exploration of class and race, White Ivy is a “highly entertaining,” (The Washington Post) “propulsive debut” (San Francisco Chronicle) that offers a glimpse into the dark side of a woman who yearns for success at any cost.

My enormous thanks to Alara Delfosse at Headline for inviting me to read and review ‘White Ivy’, the debut novel by Susie Yang which is out now in paperback and e-book formats!

This is one of those rare jewels of a novel, immaculately constructed and with a narrative voice whose authenticity is starkly juxtaposed with the choices that everyone else wants for her.

Left behind in China with her grandmother whilst her parents went to the promised land, America, Ivy straddles two very different continents and grows up learning to juggle her sense of fulfilment from both. She has the American Dream thrown at her from every corner and longs for nothing more than acceptance by her peers who remain distrustful and wary of her-she is unaware that they have her held up to them as a model of how to obey their parents which doesn’t help Ivy at all.

So she learns to take, to steal, almost as if she is stealing the personality and future that she wishes for herself versus her parents’ expectations of greatness for her. There is a disconnect between punishment and praise, they punish her for not being the child that they raised because her formative years were moulded by her grandmother in China. Conversely, Ivy has no idea of just what her parents are going through to make ends meet and achieve what they think is the dream-successful children, house ownership and monetary status all predicated by hard work ethics.

The only person who she has some common ground with is Polish immigrant, Roux, who could ‘pass’ for American but chooses not to, he wears his outsider badge like a visible red flag for anyone expecting him to adopt another country’s morals and expectations-

”Wear the right clothes,get a haircut,smile at a few girls and bam -transformation. It would be so easy for him to disguise himself as any all-American boy,and yet he made no effort to do so , whereas she,who took such pains with her clothes and her ma nerisms,would always have yellow skin and black hair and a squat nose,her exterior self hiding the truth that she was American! American! American!-the injustice of it stung deeply”.

It is such an eye opener of a novel, listening to Ivy’s voice and her frustrations at her life really makes you stop and think about what is held up be a gold standard for us to aim for, and yet, when you achieve that, there is always someone there waiting to ‘pull you down a peg or two to remind you where you came from’.

It is such a strange double standard and you look for the commonality as you reflect on what your parents and society has lined up for you, how do you break out of that box which you are born and raised in?

Emblems of success for Ivy are her Chinese cousin to whom she is sent as punishment for a social infraction. It turns out to be a life changing experience that sends her home with yet another change-in her absence, her parents have moved house again. All her hard won progress in her looks, deportment and confidence are lost as the people she aimed to impress, the golden haired boy at her school, Gideon, is no longer accessible to her. And yet, she had a glimpse of another life in Sunrin’s house, being treated almost as royalty would be because she is recognised as American.

Her howl of rage rises visibly from the page, she has been the implement of her parent’s ambitions her entire life and , taking off and leaving to create her own life is her revenge. Gideon remains her golden fleece, she feels that she will make it if she has an equivalent partner, but never expects that life will throw up surprises in the most unexpected ways…

This is such a clever book, it has so much to say about the immigrant experience versus the American way of life when there actually quite a few points of commonality between them, mainly, the notion that if you work hard enough you can get anywhere in life. Ivy’s voice is so strongly her own, and unique, and yet she does not recognise her value, feeling she is stranded between two very different types of life-

”Wasn’t her mother proof that you first love wasn’t frivolous and fleeting,and that the loss of it could destroy you,leaving behind a bitter husk of a woman who resented her  husband and children because they were not the family she was supposed to have?”

The sadness underlying this is that in her efforts to behave in the exact opposite of her mother and grandmother, by identifying and running from all the things held up to her as valuable, she is at a huge risk of recreating her female relative’s ‘mistakes’. Sometimes, if you push a child too hard they don’t just run in the opposite direction, their determination not to become ‘like that’ has them completing a full circle.

The plant, Ivy, is described as stubborn and self-supporting, it grows rapidly and can cause structural damage to foundations and I cannot imagine a more perfect name for this narrative voice. Her object of desire, Gideon, has Biblical connotations as he is seen as a hero who led his people against Israeli oppressors, and that also fits with Gideon being seen as the culmination of Ivy’s goals. But, just a life throws Gideon back into Ivy’s life, another spectre from her past also re-appears to shake the foundations of her new life. And this one won’t be easily shaken off.

There is also so much to be said about the way mainstream cultures regard and treat the ‘outsiders’, consider the most recent ‘not in our back yard’ argument about the Afghan refugees from a problem created by , and maintained  by the West. The responsibility of each human to see each other as a human being with dreams, influences and hopes for better has never been more necessary yet in such short supply.

A novel which is as deeply affecting and poignant as ‘White Ivy’ does not come along very often so I would urge readers who might come across a copy to pick it up, listen to Ivy’s voice, and let her tell her tale…

About the author…

Susie Yang was born in China and came to the United States as a child. After receiving her doctorate of pharmacy from Rutgers, she launched a tech startup in San Francisco that has taught 20,000 people how to code.

She has studied creative writing at Tin House and Sackett Street. She has lived across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and now resides in the Cambridge, England in the UK.

White Ivy is her debut novel.

Links-https://www.susiebooks.com/

Twitter @headlinepg @lararosetamara @susieyyang