Shanghailanders

Min, editor in chief of the Shanghai Literary Review, debuts with a captivating portrait of a wealthy Shanghai family, moving backward in time from 2040 to 2014. With thoughts of an idyllic life that might have been, real estate investor Leo Yang takes a high-speed train home after dropping off his Japanese French wife, Eko, and daughters, Yumi and Yoko, at the airport. As the story unfolds, narrator Mei Mei Macleod introduces listeners to the other members of the family: bitter and insecure eldest daughter Yumi, brilliant but overlooked middle daughter Yoko, and Kiko, the baby of the family, who’s more grown up than anyone realizes. Within the intertwining perspectives, Macleod sensitively relays the stories of the others who orbit the Yang family, including their live-in nanny, whose investment in her charges can never be returned in full, and the family’s private driver, who engages in harrowing nighttime street races. Macleod supplies subtly different voices for each character, including a French-tinged accent for Eko; her voices for the children are appropriately youthful, if a bit grating.