"Chang’s prose moves with the unfussy ease of a shark through water—for the longest time you are just enjoying your swim, soaking up the story. Only midway through the book does it occur to you that a master hunter is at work: a writer cutting through the darker depths of what it means to be treated as an outsider in America." —Jonathan Lee, The Guardian
“Chang’s third novel, an engrossing and darkly comedic take on ‘The Brothers Karamazov,’ tells a focused and highly readable story about the fortunes of a dysfunctional Chinese immigrant family splintered by the murder of the patriarch” —Miguel Salazar, The New York Times Book Review
"A hilarious mystery that's also a searing take on assimilation and the American dream." —People Magazine, Book of the Week
“[B]old…smart and entertaining…a rendering of late-American experience that’s measurably different from the multiple if monochromatic dysfunctions of Jonathan Franzen’s fiction, and from various immigrant novels that over-traffic in the trauma of displacement.”—Randy Boyagoda, The Financial Times
"The Family Chao is a riveting character-driven novel that delves beautifully into human psychology; Dostoevsky himself would surely approve.”—Ilana Masad, NPR
“[H]ugely satisfying…sprawling and ambitious and yet beautifully contained.”—Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times
"A playful literary romp with a serious heart. Ostensibly it’s a murder mystery, a whodunit with a large cast of possible subjects, but it’s also an exploration of genre, of literary types and stereotypes, and the impact of these types on the hopes and dreams of its characters.”—May-lee Chai, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Chang’s entertaining portrait of a…Chinese-American family, one riven by its own jealousies and secrets, is also a memorable expose of the dark undercurrents of small-town morality.” —The Independent (A Book of the Month)
Lan Samantha Chang’s book is a mash-up of literary mystery, social commentary and romantic comedy… She is a perceptive, witty writer who revels in the mess of the dysfunctional family." —Sarah Gilmartin, The Irish Times
"Lan Samantha Chang redefines the 'immigrant novel.'" —The Boston Globe
"The cracked radishes in hot oil aren’t all that’s sizzling in this bravely unsentimental murder mystery about a Chinese American family in small-town Wisconsin....Lan Samantha Chang is the first female director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She plainly has plenty to teach about the art of fiction." —Richard Lipez, The Washington Post
"The author turns the tired truism about every town having a Chinese restaurant on its head in a new novel set in Haven, Wis. After Leo Chao, the owner-patriarch of Fine Chao, is found dead, locals refer to his three sons as ‘the Brothers Karamahjong’—and because Chang knows her Dostoyevsky, this isn’t just a slur but also the sturdy scaffolding of a beautifully executed plot." —The Los Angeles Times
"If you’ve read Chang—and I strongly suggest you do—you know that she lives and writes to push the boundaries of her craft and her world....Her new novel is a genre bender: a murder story whose prose sings and snickers and soars as engagingly as Chang’s literary fiction."
—Meredith Maran, The Washington Post
"In this timely, trenchant, and thoroughly entertaining book, an immigrant family’s dreams are paid for in blood. For Chang, this marks a triumphant return.” —Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)
