Kaleidoscope
Ratings1
Average rating5
15
Ratings1
Average rating5
A dazzling and heartfelt novel about two sisters caught in their parents’ ambition, the accident that brings it all crashing down, and the journey that follows. Everybody’s heard of The Brightons. From rags to riches, sleepy Oregon to haute New York, they are the biracial Chinese American family that built Kaleidoscope, a glittering, ‘global bohemian’ shopping empire sourcing luxury goods from around the world. Statuesque, design savant, and family pet—eldest daughter Morgan Brighton is most celebrated of all. Yet despite her favored status, both within the family and in the press, nobody loves her more than Riley. Smart and nervy Riley Brighton — whose existence is forever eclipsed by her older sister’s presence. When a catastrophic event dismantles the Brightons’ world, it is Riley who’s left with questions about her family that challenge her memory, identity, and loyalty. She sets off across the globe with an unlikely companion to seek truths about the people she thought she knew best —herself included. Using the brightly colored, shifting mosaic patterns of a kaleidoscope as its guide, and told in arresting, addictive fragments, Kaleidoscope is at once a reckoning with one family’s flawed American Dream, and an examination of the precious bond between sisters. It reveals, too, the different kinds of love left to grow when tightly held stories are finally let go. At turns devastating and funny, warm and wise, sexy and transportive, Riley’s journey confronts the meaning of freedom and travel, youth and innocence, and what it looks like to belong, grieve, and love on one’s own terms.
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How to explain Kaleidoscope by Cecily Wong? I've struggled with this since I finished reading it (for the second time this week) two days ago. So I'll start with someone else's definition and share where I disagree: “A dazzling and heartfelt novel about two sisters caught in their parents' ambition, the accident that brings it all crashing down, and the journey that follows.”
I think I was expecting something a little different, more straightforward, based on that blurb - for the parents to be more sinister and conniving, maybe, or for their ambition to be the direct cause of the accident. In my opinion, the book is more nuanced than that. It's an exploration of love and humanity, of the connections who make us who we are and what happens when we lose them - and, to borrow a titular phrase of Alice Sebold, the “lovely bones” that can take shape around these absences. It's a testament to Wong's writing that it manages to be both heartbreaking and hilarious, sometimes even at the same time.
This is a powerful story, one I had to sit with for a while. I read it on Tuesday and again on Thursday; I liked it the first time and loved it the second. I did have to work a little harder, as a reader, than I'm used to - there are several times when something's alluded to but only elaborated on later, and I had to backtrack to fit the pieces together to accommodate my new understanding. While this could be frustrating, in this case it added to the experience; when you hear Karen's (Riley's mother) profound frustration with her daughter's fundamental unknowableness, how it's not in her nature to accommodate or seek approval, this stylistic choice makes even more sense.
There's more that I loved about the way Wong told this story. I found the shift from first- to third-person at the start of Part 3 jarring, but on reflection, it was brilliant. Riley's sense of self has been shattered, so why would we expect to continue hearing from her directly? The disorientation of the reader echoes and reinforces her own.
I don't want to share too much about the story itself, but I will say that I loved it. The last book to make me feel this type of way was Maggie Shipstead's ‘The Great Circle,' and while the plots aren't at all similar, what's striking me is the twin sense of exhaustion and awe and appreciation I felt after each - for the range and depth of emotion, and the extent of journeys (metaphorical and literal!) that can be contained in one book. If you're looking for a quick beach read, this isn't it, but if you're looking for something you'll return to, that I imagine will resonate differently based on whatever's happened in your life between each reading - you'll want this.
