What a time when you are alive.

Is it useful to open this review with “What a time when you are alive, in reality”? Almost certainly, but Jade Chang embraces clumsy cheese in its new novel from the influence of the spirituality La called Lola Treasure Gold. Indeed, this is a great moment for literary imagination, with no clarity in the types, patterns and tales that turn: “What is the time for life”, the climb of Lula to fame is just one topic in the Qang Literary Texture; The novel is an equal love speech to Los Angeles, the narration about being from the first generation of Asian America, exploring sadness and love and a family novel present that displays the adopted does not reunite as an emotional height.

We enter as if it had been to the funeral of her best friend, early for the first time in her life. The young man died tragicly in the skiing accident, and everything was arrested on the video because he and his friend (what) depict the sick tricks of social media. At a moment of sadness drunk, she says had it not been for something from a Christian, in which another person wanders into an ideal video clip of a sad world, and suddenly it is a viral feeling.

Then the novel passes during the year Lola: Its initial rejection of the fame of the Internet before chasing the influence of the Internet, although this is what killed her best friend. There is a TED conference, a student who is studying a lot, the ritual of the moon and another friend is famous for the music thanks to the same viral video. There are the highest levels of fame and a minimum are harassed by Internet strangers. There is a harsh reality that is behind its picturesque sadness, because its floor is full of holes, and its bank account is exaggerated, and I have no idea what you want, not to mention how to get it.

The novel is paid because Lula, like the moon you are studying, revolves around the desperate antichrist syndrome, and moments of frustrated narcissism, and asks itself calmly the question that many of us do at some point: Is this the year that I get together finally? It is psychologically complicated, and it takes over all of the beautiful sincerity and absolute magnitude.

Zhang’s voice as a stronger writer since her first novel, “The Wangs Vs. The World”. Its prose is funny in an infection, and its ability to ridicule the wealthy who pay ridiculous sums of money to lead them to their souls. Here it takes the goal of influencers who suffer from wellness and their followers and the manufacture of faith as a whole. People who fill a world without super podcast hosts, where they fall into multi -level marketing and micro -dosage daily, erasing any feeling of dread in this process.

But the most sharp satire for everyone may be it without itself – the spoiler! – It is at the end of it at the end. In its performance of sadness and the acquisition of wisdom for its followers, it is already forgotten. She became so popular that she did not remember that there was a friend there on that day, as he depicted the deadly accident, as he drowned in his sorrow and guilt. You may “see” the attendance at the moon’s party, but it does not notice it, although they are sleeping together, although it is Recount Her she is struggling.

Like “The Wangs”, Zhang’s new novel jumps in time, unveiled more past as the story advanced forward. However, unlike her appearance for the first time, “What is the right time for life” is everything from Lula’s point of view – which is an interesting transformation given Lula’s inability to see her friends clearly. She concluded in her future so that many side characters are dropped – it can be said that many side characters – when they are no longer useful for Lola. Readers will never know what he became one of the student who is studying a lot from Ted, the friend who portrayed the death of ski or the mother (type) of adoption that she loves and rejects Lula. This would bother me if I did not trust that Zhang did so intentionally as part of Its goal is to tell the stories of the non -stereotypes.

There is a hole in the midst of this narration that either had it not been for not willing to examine or no one noticed in the liberation: a mother was deported without biological when it was not in the ninth and … no one has adopted it or put it in the incubating device? A white family takes it, but it seems not legally not, and more shaded transactions are revealed throughout the novel but it has never been resolved. What happens here? Why not ask if it had not been for more questions?

The subcontinent is cut off from Lula trying to find her biological family when her brother reveals an uncomfortable mental illness. Lula you think he needs help, and she is preparing to provide it, yet he is still running away at the moment when behaving begins “dangerous”. Despite her teacher’s dreams, she does not wonder about her bias that people with serious mental illnesses and write him as he triumphed (claimed) to steal her watch – Rolex stole him from the student who taught a lot. This, Zhang seems to say, is Instagram Enlightenment. How can we trust it, or any of them?

Me, no. However, somehow, I love Lula. She reminds me of the famous fraud artist (with a focus on both “fraud” and “artist”) Caroline Kaloui. A lot of Calloway’s character was based on her wonderful ideas that reduced her insufficient charming, her approach to Satan’s care in her fame. Like Calloway, the question becomes with Lola, how much is this function and how much do you think? And how many deception herself?

In the end, Lula revealed to her followers that her misfortune from the first viral video was part of a deserted game in the desert, a challenge to disturb the topic for a full minute without stopping. The word “fraud” was given and a spiritual movement began with it.

Castelanus Clark, writer and historian in Los Angeles, author of the book “Book” Book “”Unbridled personalities: Twenty tales of rebels, treatment of rules, and revolutionaries who have never heard of it“