Friendships that begin in early childhood and endure through adulthood differ from friendships started in later years. In her debut novel, Fiona and Jane, Jean Chen Ho explores the special bond between friends who meet in primary school and experience the ups and downs of adolescence along with the typical milestones of adulthood.
The friends, Fiona and Jane, meet in second grade at their school in southern California. Fiona had just immigrated to the US with her mother and bonded with Jane, whose parents also came from Taiwan. Jane helps Fiona learn the ropes at their new school and serves as an interpreter for her that first year. But by third grade, Fiona doesn’t need Jane’s help in that department and from there on their roles will more or less switch.
Just as the two are about to graduate high school, Jane flies to Taipei to bring her estranged father home. He had been out of work in California and fell into a dark depression that seemed to end when he was offered a year-long job at a university in Taipei that appeared to extend indefinitely. Jane hopes her father will follow her home to California, but the night before her flight back her father introduces her to a friend he calls Uncle Lee. They’re at the Shilin Night Market when Uncle Lee joins them.
Lee laughed lightly, a sound almost as if he were clearing his throat. He exchanged a look with my father, and I saw something pass between them, the wordless language adults believe only they know how to speak.
Jane’s father reveals that he’s going to stay in Taipei with Lee. Although she did not know it at the time, this evening in Taipei will shape and haunt Jane—and her expectations for her friendship with Fiona—for the next couple decades.

Besides Fiona and Jane, there is a supporting cast of mainly Asian male characters, both gay and straight, that appear throughout the friends’ teenage and young adult years. In one chilling scene when the girls are sixteen, they befriend a bartender named Sung who serves them alcohol despite their obvious fake IDs. One night Sung tells them about a party he and some friends are throwing.
Sung’s directions led us to a motel near the Long Beach Airport, a two-story stucco building painted salmon pink, with ocean-blue window trims and doors to suggest a seaside resort theme. A large black satellite dish rested on top of the roof, which was missing more than a few of its terra-cotta tiles.
The two girls barely make it out of there in one piece. Yet it’s experiences like this that will solidify their friendship even when they go years without talking when Fiona moves to New York for the better part of a decade after college.
Fiona and Jane is structured into a number of chapters that could almost be stand-alone short stories, not always arranged in chronological order. Chen Ho is a masterful storyteller and leaves no lacunae as the story moves backward and forward. In a world that is increasingly defined by social media connections, the waxing and waning of Fiona and Jane’s bond reaffirms that close, in-person friendships still have a chance.
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