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A mysterious death in a small-town family restaurant kickstarts a darkly comic tale of rivalryLan Samantha Chang’s third novel begins by bringing history to the table: “For thirty-five years, everyone supported Leo Chao’s restaurant.” The Wisconsin eatery is a family affair. Everyone assumes it will eventually be peacefully handed down to one of Leo’s three sons – but they overlook just how fraught and bloody inheritance can be. “In dark times,” Chang writes, with a characteristically cunning sense of slow-boiled foreboding, “there is really nothing like a good, steaming soup, and dumplings made from scratch.”The Family Chao was not quite made from scratch. Some of the dough that forms its schemes and themes comes from The Brothers Karamazov. In fact, Chang’s story at first brings to mind another Dostoevsky-influenced state-of-America novel: Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. In both books, the reader meets three adult siblings coming home for a family Christmas as the patriarch loses his grip on power. But where The Corrections sprawled and swelled, The Family Chao has a laser focus: one restaurant, one town, and one crime that will transform the family’s fortunes. As with Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, a novel that took its blueprint from Howards End, you get the sense that borrowing the bones of a classic has freed up the author to focus on making every interior detail as perfect as it can be. Continue reading...