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

Is it tacky to open this overview with “What a time to be alive, certainly”? Nearly actually, however Jade Chang embraces clumsy cheesiness in her new novel about an L.A. spirituality influencer named Lola Treasure Gold. And really, this can be a nice second for literary fiction, with genres blurring and archetypes and tales remodeling: In “What a Time to Be Alive,” Lola’s rise to fame is only one thread in Chang’s literary tapestry; the novel is equal components love letter to Los Angeles, narrative about being a first-generation Asian American, exploration of grief and love and a found-family novel that includes an adoptee that doesn’t put reunion because the emotional climax.

We enter as Lola arrives at her greatest buddy’s funeral, early for the primary time in her life. The younger man has died tragically in a skateboarding accident, and the entire thing was caught on video as a result of he and his buddy have been (what else) filming sick methods for social media. In a second of drunken grief, Lola says one thing type of messianic, which another person cuts collectively right into a video excellent for a grieving world, and out of the blue she’s a viral sensation.

The novel then winds via Lola’s yr after that: her preliminary rejection of web fame earlier than chasing web clout regardless of understanding that’s what killed her greatest buddy. There’s a TED convention, an attractive nerd, moon rituals and one other buddy getting well-known as a musician due to the identical viral video. There are the highs of fame and the lows of being harassed by web strangers. And there’s the merciless actuality that behind her picturesque grief, her flooring is stuffed with holes, her checking account is overdrawn, and Lola has no concept what she needs, not to mention get it.

The novel is propulsive as a result of Lola, just like the moon she teaches about, cycles via determined impostor syndrome, moments of irritating narcissism, and quietly asking herself the query many people do sooner or later: Is that this the yr I lastly get it collectively? She is psychologically complicated, straddling each stunning sincerity and utter vapidity.

Chang’s voice as a author has gotten stronger since her debut novel, “The Wangs vs. the World.” Her prose is infectiously humorous, and her skill to satirize wealthy folks paying foolish quantities of cash to be led to their souls has solely sharpened. Right here she takes intention at influencers espousing wellness for likes, their followers and the entire business of commodifying perception. The folks populating Lola’s world are internet hosting inane-sounding podcasts, falling for multi-level advertising schemes and microdosing each day, erasing any sense of awe within the course of.

However the sharpest satire of all could also be Lola herself who — spoiler! — falls for her personal shtick in the long run. In her efficiency of grieving and gaining knowledge for her followers, she forgets to truly grieve. She turns into so wrapped up in her personal fame that she doesn’t keep in mind that there was a buddy there that day, filming the deadly accident, and he’s drowning in his grief and guilt. She could “see” her moon ceremony attendees, however she doesn’t discover him, although they’re sleeping collectively, although he tells her he’s struggling.

Like “The Wangs,” Chang’s new novel jumps round in time, revealing extra of the previous because the story strikes ahead. But in contrast to her debut, “What a Time to Be Alive” is all from Lola’s viewpoint — an fascinating shift contemplating Lola’s incapability to see her buddies clearly. She is so wrapped up in her personal future that lots of the facet characters — arguably, too many facet characters — get dropped after they’re not helpful to Lola. Readers won’t ever know what grew to become of the horny nerd from TED, the buddy who filmed the skateboarder’s loss of life or the (type of) adoptive mom who each loves and rejects Lola. This could annoy me if I didn’t belief Chang did this deliberately as a part of her objective to inform atypical immigrant tales.

There’s a gap on the middle of this narrative that both Lola is unwilling to look at or nobody seen in enhancing: Lola’s organic mom was deported when Lola was 9 and … nobody adopted her or put her into the foster system? A white household takes her in, however seemingly not legally, and extra shady dealings are revealed all through the novel however by no means solved. What’s happening right here? Why doesn’t Lola ask extra questions?

The subplot of Lola looking for her organic household is lower off when her brother reveals himself to be inconveniently mentally ailing. Lola believes that he wants assist, and that she is poised to supply that, but nonetheless runs away the second he begins to behave “harmful.” Regardless of her guru goals, she doesn’t query her personal bias that mentally ailing persons are harmful and writes it off like he triumphed by (allegedly) stealing her watch — a Rolex that she had stolen from the horny nerd. This, Chang appears to be saying, is Instagram Enlightenment. How can we belief her, or any of them?

I don’t. And but, one way or the other, I like Lola. She jogs my memory of the well-known rip-off artist (with the emphasis equally on each “rip-off” and “artist”) Caroline Calloway. A lot of Calloway’s persona rested on her sensible concepts tempered by charming ineptitude, her devil-may-care strategy to her personal fame. Like Calloway, the query with Lola turns into, how a lot of that is her job and the way a lot of it does she consider? And simply how a lot has she duped herself?

Ultimately, Lola reveals to her followers that her messianic speech from the preliminary viral video was a part of a drunken recreation within the desert, a problem to hold forth on a topic for a full minute with out pausing. She’d been given the phrase “rip-off” and began a non secular motion with it.

Castellanos Clark, a author and historian in Los Angeles, is the creator of “Unruly Figures: Twenty Tales of Rebels, Rulebreakers, and Revolutionaries You’ve (In all probability) By no means Heard Of.”