Beauty Plus Pity

(Paperback)

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Beauty plus pity--that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.--Vladimir Nabokov

In this tragicomic modern immigrant's tale, Malcolm Kwan is a slacker twentysomething Asian-Canadian living in Vancouver who is about to embark on a modelling career when his life is suddenly derailed by two near-simultaneous events: the death of his filmmaker father, and the betrayal of his fiance who has left him. Soon he meets Hadley, the half-sister he never knew existedthe result of his father's extramarital affairand as their tentative relationship grows, Malcolm is forced to confront his past relationships with women, including his own mother, an art teacher working through her grief as well as her resentment at her son befriending her husband's daughter.

Written with a winsome yet plaintive eye, Beauty Plus Pity is about a young man who's forced to reckon with the past as he works through his lifelong ambivalence toward his hyphenated cultural identity, and between two parents holding intolerable secrets.

Kevin Chong is the author of the novel Baroque-a-Nova (Plume) and the memoir Neil Young Nation (Greystone Books).

Reviews

This unassuming, well-written novel is quiet in every way--subtly entertaining, poignant, and funny. --Publishers Weekly

A novel of heartbreak and humor, Beauty Plus Pity is written with an energy and humanity few novels possess. Kevin Chong is an extraordinary writer who is at the top of his game. --Steven Galloway, author of The Cellist of Sarajevo

Funny and devastating. Chong is a melange of Bukowski and Woody Allen. --Rawi Hage, author of De Niro's Game and Cockroach

Author Bio

Kevin Chong: Kevin Chong was born in Hong Kong in 1975 and raised in Vancouver. He is the author of a novel, Baroque-a-Nova (Plume, 2002), a music memoir entitled Neil Young Nation (Greystone/PGW, 2005), and a forthcoming memoir on horse-racing. He lives in Vancouver.