JULY 2020 - AudioFile
Narrator Reuben Uy brings life to a Filipino mother-and-son duo who are “hiding and hiding.” The story is told through the point of view of prodigal son, Excel, who returns to his mother’s cramped California apartment after a brief stint in a desert town, where he’d hoped to reinvent his life after spending so much of it trying to hide his undocumented status. Uy attends to the emotional dynamics between Excel, who never speaks above a whisper, and his larger-than-life mother, Maxima, a retired actress who scams lonely men online. Throughout, Uy deftly embodies diverse characters—from a Serbian grandpa who works with Excel to a string of Maxima’s “boyfriends.” Along the way, he gets listeners to care about what will happen next to this quirky, loving immigrant family. G.P. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
★ 05/04/2020
Tenorio’s mordant and moving debut novel (after the collection Monstress) follows the travails of an undocumented Filipino immigrant mother and son. Nineteen-year-old Excel reluctantly makes the long trek back to the apartment where he grew up in Colma, Calif., from Hello City, a relaxed town of hippies and techies near the Mexican border, where he’d moved nine months earlier with his girlfriend, Sab. Excel has a debt in Hello City—$10,000, to be exact—and his only option is to ask for his old job at The Pie Who Loved Me, a restaurant where “pizza goes to die.” His mother, Maxina, a former action star, lives with Joker, Maxina’s childhood martial arts instructor and a grandfather figure to Excel. These days, Maxina makes a living scamming American men seeking obedient Filipina wives online. Excel and Maxina have had a turbulent relationship since Excel’s 10th birthday, when Maxina told him they were tago ng tago (hiding and hiding)—but with such a large debt to pay back, the pizza earnings aren’t enough, and Excel turns to Maxina for help. Written with great empathy and sly humor, Tenorio’s tale of Excel and Maxima’s gradual reconciliation takes a searing look at the ways they’ve taken care of and failed each other. This is a wonderful achievement. (July)
Kevin Wilson
Lysley Tenorio's The Son of Good Fortune is flat-out brilliant, and what makes it so wondrous is how Tenorio controls the complexity of the narrative. How can a book be filled with so much humor, such a light touch, and yet still touch that weird place in our heart that can break us apart? Excel and his mother, Maxima, are characters you won't forget, and the world in which they exist, stuck between belonging and not belonging, does not deserve them.
Natalie Baszile
"With compassion and quirky brilliance, Lysley Tenorio’s debut novel, The Son of Good Fortune, delivers memorable characters who seek to carve out meaningful lives while caught in situations by turns timely and utterly shocking. With grace and earned authority, Tenorio shows us what it means to live life on the margins and in the shadows, and reminds us that even the humblest among us deserves respect. I loved every page."
Refinery 29
"Filled with the kind of absurdities that accompany the most difficult truths, Lysley Tenorio's brilliant, witty novel about the love of a mother and son, the immigrant experience in America, and the surreality of our current reality, is bold, ambitious, and unforgettable."
Mia Alvar
"The Son of Good Fortune is a deeply compassionate and richly imagined novel about the families we make and the families who make us. Lysley Tenorio peels back such labels as “American,” “Filipino,” “immigrant,” and “undocumented” to show us a mother and son in all their bright humanity—and the forms of love, connection, and survival available to them in a broken country. Tenorio is a master storyteller, and—like his brilliant collection, Monstress—this is a gorgeous, searing wonder of a book."
USA Today
Sharp and compassionate…. Tenorio is a gifted, expressive writer about the Filipino American diaspora…. A powerful story about what it takes to uncover a sense of oneself when you’ve been forced to keep it under wraps.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
"When you don’t belong where you are, where exactly do you belong? Lysley Tenorio’s engaging and comic first novel about immigration and identity asks this question with compassion and savage humor."
Christian Science Monitor
[A] fierce, revelatory literary experience…. Tenorio has written a resonant story about what one family is willing to do to “protect the child.” It’s seamlessly interwoven with cogent explorations of hybrid identity, racism, immigration history, shifting familial bonds, parental sacrifice, socioeconomic disparity, and even alternative social models…. [Tenorio] humanizes the lives imperiled by shifting immigration policies.
San Diego Union-Tribune
A bewitching and highly approachable novel on what it’s like to be an undocumented American…. With his sensitive and subdued style of writing, Tenorio has crafted a novel that speaks to the experience of the undocumented, as well to what we all must hide in order to survive.
Charles Yu
This story is bursting with heart and wisdom, humor and hope. Tenorio's gifts as a writer are on display in this expertly constructed, gorgeously written tale of a family haunted by past mistakes, struggling toward the future. Immersive in its rich detail, it gathers momentum to its affecting and powerful conclusion. A remarkable novel by an author I plan to follow for years to come.
BookPage
Tenorio, himself a Filipino immigrant, accurately and compassionately portrays the immigrant experience. Despite its universality, The Son of Good Fortune doesn’t lack for originality…. The story finds a witty voice and sets a unique tone. Despite the drudgery and harshness of immigrant life, Tenorio explores the humanity in the tribulations and creates characters who are as lovable as they are real. With his debut novel, Tenorio excavates joy from the immigrant experience.
Lisa Ko
Full of heart, wisdom, and humor, The Son of Good Fortune is an unforgettable novel of mothers and sons, secrets and truth, and what it means to belong, told through the story of one undocumented Filipino family.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
In this perceptive and sensitive novel, Lysley Tenorio views the troubled American Dream through the eyes of Excel, an undocumented immigrant literally born in the air between the Philippines and the United States. The result, in The Son of Good Fortune, is a nuanced and subtle account of that most basic American dynamic, the melancholic and sometimes devastating fluctuation between promise and failure, happiness and its opposite."
Booklist
Tenorio, author of the short-story collection Monstress (2012), the San Francisco Chronicle's Book of the Year, is back with a highly anticipated debut novel…. Tenorio creates an unusual perspective on Filipino culture and inspires readers to reflect on what it means to be an undocumented American…. Thoughtful.
Omnivoracious
"You know the feeling of picking up a book and realizing within ten pages that what you’re reading is something... special? Something different? Well, that’s what it’s like reading Lysley Tenorio’s novel.... A funny and kind novel about home and identity."
InStyle Magazine
"The Son of Good Fortune defies categorization — it’s an immigrant tale, a character study, a heartfelt and hilarious adventure."
James Hannaham
"Living with this extraordinarily human undocumented family will make you laugh, weep, and think, sometimes all at once. Tenorio brilliantly makes these characters so original that they’re nearly tangible."
Asian American Lit Fans
Lysley Tenorio has fortunately graced us with his exquisite prose again… Tenorio painstakingly crafts the evolution of a prickly relationship between mother and son.
Peter Orner
"Tenorio's The Son of Good Fortune, so propulsive, so over-the-top with life, I fell into it, deeply. This novel restored my faith in the power of a story to heal our self-inflicted wounds. We need such books, now more than ever."
Shelf Awareness (starred review)
[The Son of Good Fortune] sympathetically illuminates the tenuous lives of undocumented immigrants, those who are ‘not really here’.… Tenorio's characters are humorous and loving, in spite of the exclusion overshadowing their very existence.
Salon
[The Son of Good Fortune is] a reminder that many experiences comprise the definition of what makes a person American…. Tenorio skillfully sketches out what an all-American boy like Excel experiences in his in-betweenness…. A damning yet clear-eyed acknowledgement that for many, the American dream is merely survival.
Adam Johnson
I have a new favorite novel on my shelf.... A field study of the glamorous allure of the American dream and the eternal ache of its exclusion. Tenorio’s great talent lies in underpinning every moment of flash and humor with love, longing and the ever-forlorn question of identity. This novel is like a stone skipped across the Pacific, all the way to Manila. Visualize it, that series of rings lingering on the ocean’s surface, expanding, intersecting, intermingling to form a chain that anchors these characters, connects them, and after years of binding them, sets them free.
San Francisco Chronicle
Lysley Tenorio’s funny and poignant second novel, The Son of Good Fortune, couldn’t come at a better time…. Tenorio skillfully wrings high comedy from his characters’ boxed-in lives in a country that doesn’t know what to do with them…. Timely.
New York Times Book Review
Tenorio’s insistence on the specificity of his characters’ dreams and longings is its own kind of argument for their right to be here…. An affecting portrayal of just how potently a parent can shape the expectations of her child…. His story is a tribute to the extreme inner strength it takes to make any life decision look like fate.
San Francisco Chronicle
Lysley Tenorio’s funny and poignant second novel, The Son of Good Fortune, couldn’t come at a better time…. Tenorio skillfully wrings high comedy from his characters’ boxed-in lives in a country that doesn’t know what to do with them…. Timely.
USA Today
Sharp and compassionate…. Tenorio is a gifted, expressive writer about the Filipino American diaspora…. A powerful story about what it takes to uncover a sense of oneself when you’ve been forced to keep it under wraps.
Booklist
Tenorio, author of the short-story collection Monstress (2012), the San Francisco Chronicle's Book of the Year, is back with a highly anticipated debut novel…. Tenorio creates an unusual perspective on Filipino culture and inspires readers to reflect on what it means to be an undocumented American…. Thoughtful.
JULY 2020 - AudioFile
Narrator Reuben Uy brings life to a Filipino mother-and-son duo who are “hiding and hiding.” The story is told through the point of view of prodigal son, Excel, who returns to his mother’s cramped California apartment after a brief stint in a desert town, where he’d hoped to reinvent his life after spending so much of it trying to hide his undocumented status. Uy attends to the emotional dynamics between Excel, who never speaks above a whisper, and his larger-than-life mother, Maxima, a retired actress who scams lonely men online. Throughout, Uy deftly embodies diverse characters—from a Serbian grandpa who works with Excel to a string of Maxima’s “boyfriends.” Along the way, he gets listeners to care about what will happen next to this quirky, loving immigrant family. G.P. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2020-04-13
An undocumented Filipino American teenager struggles to make sense of his past in order to move into the future.
After spending nine months in the desert of Southern California, 19-year-old Excel Maxino ("like the spreadsheet") tries sneaking back into his old apartment via the fire escape but finds himself at the business end of a switchblade, wielded by his mother, Maxima. A former D-list star of Philippine action movies, Maxima welcomes Excel back with leftover Panda Express and doesn't ask any questions about his reappearance. Instead, she must get back to work scamming men on online dating sites to make ends meet. Though Excel doesn't volunteer the truth of his nine-month excursion, the chapters alternate between his present-day struggles to raise money and his misguided adventure to the desert oasis of Hello City, where he and his girlfriend, Sab, tried to make a life for themselves. This deceptively simple back-and-forth structure yields a rich cast of characters, who quickly populate the world and bring it to life. Gunter, a Serbian immigrant, rehires Excel at The Pie Who Loved Me, a children's pizzeria with an espionage theme, with hilarious and unfortunate results. Joker, the grandmaster who trained Maxima in martial arts, slips forbidden comic books to Excel before his unfortunate passing. While most interactions within this widening circle of relationships serve to advance the plot, a few of the roles feel a bit forced, as with Gunter's grandfather Zivko, who studies a dictionary at the pizzeria and slips words and phrases into Excel's lexicon. But the occasional diversion doesn't detract from the propulsive prose, captivating characters, and vital details of immigrant life, like the Tagalog phrase for undocumented Phillipinos, "TNT," which stands for tago ng tago: hiding and hiding.
A masterfully constructed story of identity and ambition and an authentic portrait of one unforgettable Filipino family.
