A review by luckybydesign
Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi
5.0
I was so excited when I saw that Simon & Schuster Canada approved my NetGalley request to read an eARC of Permanent Record. I had read Mary H.K. Choi's debut new adult novel, Emergency Contact, and loved it, and Choi's very modern and youthful style completely. Permanent Record was no different - I devoured it voraciously, all the while hoping it would never end.
Some mild spoilers within the analysis below...
Permanent Record sounds, at surface level, like a completely cheesy, overdone trope: totally ordinary boy falls in love with an obscenely famous girl, they enter into a relationship, things get tricky because of her fame, they break up, and then get back together. Sounds like every teen movie ever, right? This is almost the exact storyline of Choi's novel, but there's way more to it than this.
Choi uses the bones of this tired trope to flesh out something a lot deeper. Fame is a big theme here, and the celebrity machine that America has invented. Lee (or Leanna Smart), a former child star from a Disney TV series turned pop icon, lives a completely fake life, with fake hair and fake boobs, and meetings and events endowed with fake importance. Clearly, she longs for something real, which is what she finds when she meets Pablo. Pablo Neruda Rind works the night shift at a bodega in NYC, and although it wasn't his intention, uses his relationship with Lee as an escape from an unhappy life.
Holding Pab up against Lee's life of excess lets us really examine the topic of money. Pablo is broke. Not just broke, but in debt. And every decision (some his fault, like the turntables he bought from a music store and never used, and some not his fault, like when he gets sick and has to go to the walk-in clinic and pay $400 for them to do x-rays and tell him there's nothing they can do to heal his flu) he makes about money causes him to go further in debt, which he deals with by ignoring it, and stuffing envelopes with PAST DUE stamped on them in a drawer in the tiny room in the apartment he shares with four other guys. Meanwhile, Lee tries to spend $4000 on a suit as a gift to Pab. Choi never preaches about the topic of money, but the juxtaposition of the 1% against a reality that will look familiar to many people makes a loud statement about what it's like to live in poverty (even a poverty created through sometimes stupid decisions), the endless cycle that it can create for ordinary people.
Another big theme in this novel is race. Pablo is not Latinx as his name might imply (he is named after Chilean poet Pablo Neruda). His mom, a doctor, is Korean, and his dad, a professor and playwright, is Pakistani. Pab's roommates represent various nationalities and ethnicities. There are many times race plays a quiet factor in this novel. Pab brings up occasions when his heritage is confusing to others, like when he visits Korea with Lee and nobody realizes he's Korean. His brown skin makes some minor characters assume he's hired help, rather than a guest. Lee's character, whose parents are Mexican, also reveals something about race when she talks about how her public persona is sanitized and made more palatable for white viewers. She's proud that her next album will be released in English and Spanish. As with the topic of money, Choi is never heavy handed when she talks about race, but it is an important and underlying consideration for every character in this book.
As with Emergency Contact, Choi's language, diction, and characters are undeniably millennial. One of the best things about this book is how perfectly right Choi got Pab's voice. He sounds, acts, and thinks exactly like a twenty-year-old college dropout living in Brooklyn. Even Pab's obsession with snack foods and sneakers (and his popular Instagram account that features a snack matched to a shoe) feels so incredibly current. But Choi also makes Pab's character emotional, introspective, and flawed. One of my favourite things in this book was Choi's rendering of Pab's family. Pab's mom works so hard, and has high expectations for her sons, reflecting something many kids of first generation immigrants will be able to recognize. Pab's dad is his mom's foil - emotional, artistic, and willing to take as many risks as he has to for the sake of creativity. Although they separated when Pab's brother Rain was a baby, they always parented their kids together. They definitely didn't do things perfectly, as the screw-ups that both Pab and Rain do fairly constantly can attest to, but it's so clear that their family is full of so much love. In fact, it's Pab's family that finally helps him realize what he needs to do to save his stalled life and move forward in a way that feels right to him.
Second novels, especially ones that come after debut books that many people loved, can sometimes fall short, but Permanent Record just solidified my fan status for Mary H.K. Choi. Sign me up for the next one!
Some mild spoilers within the analysis below...
Spoiler
Permanent Record sounds, at surface level, like a completely cheesy, overdone trope: totally ordinary boy falls in love with an obscenely famous girl, they enter into a relationship, things get tricky because of her fame, they break up, and then get back together. Sounds like every teen movie ever, right? This is almost the exact storyline of Choi's novel, but there's way more to it than this.
Choi uses the bones of this tired trope to flesh out something a lot deeper. Fame is a big theme here, and the celebrity machine that America has invented. Lee (or Leanna Smart), a former child star from a Disney TV series turned pop icon, lives a completely fake life, with fake hair and fake boobs, and meetings and events endowed with fake importance. Clearly, she longs for something real, which is what she finds when she meets Pablo. Pablo Neruda Rind works the night shift at a bodega in NYC, and although it wasn't his intention, uses his relationship with Lee as an escape from an unhappy life.
Holding Pab up against Lee's life of excess lets us really examine the topic of money. Pablo is broke. Not just broke, but in debt. And every decision (some his fault, like the turntables he bought from a music store and never used, and some not his fault, like when he gets sick and has to go to the walk-in clinic and pay $400 for them to do x-rays and tell him there's nothing they can do to heal his flu) he makes about money causes him to go further in debt, which he deals with by ignoring it, and stuffing envelopes with PAST DUE stamped on them in a drawer in the tiny room in the apartment he shares with four other guys. Meanwhile, Lee tries to spend $4000 on a suit as a gift to Pab. Choi never preaches about the topic of money, but the juxtaposition of the 1% against a reality that will look familiar to many people makes a loud statement about what it's like to live in poverty (even a poverty created through sometimes stupid decisions), the endless cycle that it can create for ordinary people.
Another big theme in this novel is race. Pablo is not Latinx as his name might imply (he is named after Chilean poet Pablo Neruda). His mom, a doctor, is Korean, and his dad, a professor and playwright, is Pakistani. Pab's roommates represent various nationalities and ethnicities. There are many times race plays a quiet factor in this novel. Pab brings up occasions when his heritage is confusing to others, like when he visits Korea with Lee and nobody realizes he's Korean. His brown skin makes some minor characters assume he's hired help, rather than a guest. Lee's character, whose parents are Mexican, also reveals something about race when she talks about how her public persona is sanitized and made more palatable for white viewers. She's proud that her next album will be released in English and Spanish. As with the topic of money, Choi is never heavy handed when she talks about race, but it is an important and underlying consideration for every character in this book.
As with Emergency Contact, Choi's language, diction, and characters are undeniably millennial. One of the best things about this book is how perfectly right Choi got Pab's voice. He sounds, acts, and thinks exactly like a twenty-year-old college dropout living in Brooklyn. Even Pab's obsession with snack foods and sneakers (and his popular Instagram account that features a snack matched to a shoe) feels so incredibly current. But Choi also makes Pab's character emotional, introspective, and flawed. One of my favourite things in this book was Choi's rendering of Pab's family. Pab's mom works so hard, and has high expectations for her sons, reflecting something many kids of first generation immigrants will be able to recognize. Pab's dad is his mom's foil - emotional, artistic, and willing to take as many risks as he has to for the sake of creativity. Although they separated when Pab's brother Rain was a baby, they always parented their kids together. They definitely didn't do things perfectly, as the screw-ups that both Pab and Rain do fairly constantly can attest to, but it's so clear that their family is full of so much love. In fact, it's Pab's family that finally helps him realize what he needs to do to save his stalled life and move forward in a way that feels right to him.
Second novels, especially ones that come after debut books that many people loved, can sometimes fall short, but Permanent Record just solidified my fan status for Mary H.K. Choi. Sign me up for the next one!