“Women of Good Fortune” by Sophie Wan

Women of Good Fortune, Sophie Wan (Graydon House, March 2024)

At first glance, Sophie Wan’s debut novel, Women of Good Fortune, set around a glamorous wedding in contemporary Shanghai, may seem like an archetypal romantic comedy of girl meets boy, girl loses boy, and girl gets boy at the end. But it soon becomes evident that the novel is instead a more sobering story that calls to mind Frances Cha’s If I Had Your Face, another debut novel that features a group of friends who are trying to navigate the sometimes-impossible expectations and demands on young women in East Asia.

The three friends in Wan’s story—Lulu, Jane, and Rina—meet regularly over hotpot and name themselves the Leftovers, as in leftover women. The book begins ten months before Lulu’s wedding to Harv, the son of real estate tycoons. Harv is US-educated and is being groomed to take over his parents’ business, but feels like his father is setting him up for failure. He meets beautiful Lulu at the restaurant where she works as a hostess and proposes marriage soon after they start dating. His parents have pressured him to marry. When he picks someone they feel is below them, they nevertheless try to be accepting; Lulu starts to fear for her freedom once she moves in with Harv’s family, especially his mother.

Jane is married to a man named Zihao and so isn’t technically “leftover”, although there was a worry for a long time that she would never find a husband. Her marriage was arranged: Jane’s parents didn’t think she’d have the looks to find a “good” husband and Zihao’s parents liked that Jane’s parents had purchased a condo for her in Shanghai. Jane is unhappy in her marriage and dreams of getting plastic surgery.

 

If she could get surgery, the hours of poring over fashion magazines, agonizing over the perfect outfit, acquiring handbags, and becoming a master at makeup will simply be a way to express herself rather than to hide what she hates.

 

Jane knows her thrifty and practical husband Zhihao wouldn’t approve of the high cost of plastic surgery, so she keeps these plans to herself—and the Leftovers.

Rina, the third of the Leftovers, is an executive who wants to marry and have children, but doesn’t see that happening while she’s still moving up the corporate ladder. Her dream is to freeze her eggs so she can have children at a later age after she’s had a few more promotions, whether or not she’s married.

Women of Good Fortune is an impressive debut that addresses social issues in contemporary China in a universal and sympathetic way.

As the women discuss Lulu’s wedding preparations and Lulu starts to feel like she cannot marry Harv, they casually speak about finding Lulu a way out. It’s too late to cancel the wedding, but the women come up with a plan to make all their dreams come true: a grand heist of the red envelope wedding money. They estimate that Harv’s family and friends will give the couple a total of five million RMB, enough for Lulu to disappear to Thailand, for Rina to pay to freeze her eggs, and for Jane to get plastic surgery.

The women enlist the help of two others: a master counterfeiter and Rina’s cousin Mei to drive the getaway car. Their scheme also involves hacking into the wedding venue’s security system to disable the surveillance cameras while the red envelopes are stealthily taken away and a counterfeit safe remains in the reception area. The wedding itself goes off without a hitch even though Lulu is nervous.

 

A walkway covered in red brocade runs from the sand and over the lagoon, where a floating platform awaits. The scent of gardenias surrounds them, the pungency sticking in her throat. Rows of white chairs line the sand, and everyone turns to watch as Lulu’s dad leads her forward. Their gazes weigh her down more than the countless pins and combs in her hair.

 

It’s not apparent until the very end as to whether the trio will forge ahead with their plans or if they will let the red envelopes remain in the original safe. Wan neatly balances Lulu’s wedding planning with the preparations for the heist in a way that keeps the story moving along at a good pace. Wan’s book is an impressive debut that addresses social issues in contemporary China in a universal and sympathetic way.


Susan Blumberg-Kason is the author of Bernardine’s Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China, Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong and When Friends Come From Afar: The Remarkable Story of Bernie Wong and Chicago’s Chinese American Service League.