‘What a Time to Be Alive’ review: Jade Chang satirizes wellness gurus

Is it really a drain to open this review with “what time to be alive, really”? Almost certainly, Jade Chang takes clumsy raw materials in his new novel about the influential influence of La Spiritally named Lola Treasury Gold. Indeed, this is a great moment for literary science fiction, with blurry genres converting archetypes and stories: at “what time to be alive”, the rise of Lola to glory is just one thread in the literary tapestry of Chang; Roman is equal parts of a love letter in Los Angeles, a narrative that he is an Asia-American first generation, a study of grief and love and a novel of a “found family” with the participation of a mustache, which does not put reunification as an emotional climax.

We come in when Lola arrives at the funeral of her best friend, early for the first time in my life. The young man tragically died as a result of an accident on a skateboard, and all this was caught on the video, because he and his friend (what else) were filmed by sore tricks for social networks. At the time of drunken grief, Lola says something like Messiana, which is still merging in a video, ideal for the mourning world, and suddenly it will become a viral sensation.

Then the novel passes a year after this: her initial abandonment of the Internet Slava, before pursuing the Internet, despite the fact that this killed her best friend. There is a TED conference, sexy botanist, lunar rituals and another friend who is known as a musician thanks to the same virus video. There are maximums of glory and falls that are subjected to persecution by the Internet, Nemans. And there is a cruel reality that behind her picturesque grief her floor is full of holes, her bank account is full, and Lola has no idea what she wants, not to mention how to get it.

The romance is moving, because Lola, like the moon, which she teaches, cyclically passes through the syndrome of a desperate impostor, moments of disappointing narcissism and quietly asking ourselves the question that many of us do at some moment: will this year finally gather it together? It is psychologically complex, having mastered both excellent sincerity and full vapidity.

The voice of Chang as a writer has become stronger since her debut novel “Wangs vs. The World “. Her prose is infectiously funny, and her ability to make fun of rich people paying stupid amounts of money to lead to their souls, only sharpened. Here she seeks to influence the well -being for likes, their followers and the entire industry industry. People who inhabit the world of Lola conduct meaningless podcasts, daily fall in love with multi -level marketing schemes and microdostering, erasing any feeling of fear in the process.

But Lola herself, which is a spoiler! – In the end, falls in love with his own Shtik. In her speech, sorrow and obtaining wisdom for her followers, she forgets in fact to mourn. She turned so in her own glory so much that she does not remember that there was a friend that day, taking off his accident, and he sinks in his grief and wine. She can “see” her participants in the Moon ceremony, but she does not notice him, although they are sleeping together, although he reports He is fighting her.

Like “The Wangs”, Changa’s new novel jumps on time, revealing more than the past when the story moves forward. Nevertheless, unlike her debut, “what time to be alive” – everything from the point of view of Lola is an interesting shift, given the inability of Lola to clearly see their friends. It is so wrapped in its own future that many side characters – perhaps too many side characters – are dropped when they are no longer useful for Lola. Readers will never know what happened to the sexy botanist from Ted, a friend who relieved the death of a skateboarder or (a kind) adoptive mother who loves and rejects Lola. It would annoy me if I had not trusted Chanu, doing it intentionally as part Its goal is to tell atypical immigrant storiesField

In the center of this narrative there is a hole that Lola does not want to study, or no one noticed in editing: Lola’s biological mother was deported when Lole was 9 years old, and … no one accepted it or put it in the reception system? The white family takes it, but, it would seem, not legally, and more shady relations are revealed throughout the novel, but never dares. What is happening here? Why doesn't Lola ask any more questions?

The submarine section of Lola, trying to find her biological family, is cut off when her brother shows himself inconveniently mentally ill. Lola believes that he needs help, and that she is ready to offer it, but still runs away at the moment when he begins to act “dangerous”. Despite her dreams of the guru, she does not question her own bias that mentally ill people are dangerous and unsubscribes it as if he had won (supposedly) theft of her watch – Rolex, which she stole from a sexy botanist. This seems to be a chant seems to say that Instagram is an enlightenment. How can we trust her or to anyone from them?

I don't. And yet, somehow, I like Lola. It reminds me of the famous fraudulent artist (with an accent equally on both “fraud” and “artist”) Caroline Calloway. Most of Calloway's personality relied on her brilliant ideas, softened by charming inability, her approach to her own glory. Like Calloway, the question with Lola becomes how much of this is her work and how much does she believe? And how much did she deceive herself?

In the end, Lola tells his followers that her messianic speech from the original viral video was part of a drunken game in the desert, a call to a pontification for a whole minute without a pause. She was given the word “scam” and began with him a spiritual movement.

Castellanos Clark, writer and historian in Los -Angeles, is the author “Unguided figures: twenty stories about rebels, violators of the rules and revolutionaries, whom you (probably) have never heard of.