A Chinese Wedding

When Amy Wyse first exchanges a few shouted words with Winston Lee at a noisy party in Philadelphia, she has no inkling that a year later she will be sitting at a traditional Chinese wedding feast in Hong Kong as his bride. And at first, glorying in the exotic newness of Hong Kong, Amy believes her dreams of escape from the mundane world of lower middle class America have at last been realised. Living in close proximity with three generations of the Lee family, however, soon forces Amy to reassess her whole what kind of future she sees for herself; above all the true nature of the man she has married. Brought up to reach for what she wants, Amy acts, but in acting exposes the vast gulf that still exists between Hong Kong and Philadelphia - a gulf that even love may not be able to bridge. Mixing flashbacks and conventional narrative, Simon Elegant draws a complex portrait of a young woman groping her way into the world and towards an understanding of herself. Set against a background of Hong Kong, Philadelphia and the Philippines, A Chinese Wedding is more than a story of love between two vastly different cultures; it is an intriguing glimpse of a complex and evolving personality, a first novel from an author of rare sensitivity and talent.