Kirstin Chen

A novel with a clever twist, Counterfeit by Kirsten Chen is an entertaining read.

“Now, looking back, I see all the things I got wrong, all my preconceived notions and mistaken assumptions…. But I’ve gotten carried away. Enough about me. We’re here to talk about Winnie.”

Written in an almost, but not quite, stream-of-consciousness style, Part I unfolds from the perspective of Ava Wong. In her version of events, related anxiously to a police detective, Ava claims to be a victim of her show more former college roommate Winnie Fang. While Ava, with her Ivy League education, a handsome successful husband and a young son, may seem to have had it all, she confesses, her life was a bit of a mess. She was therefore vulnerable when Winnie, once a ‘fobby’ (denouncing her as fresh off the boat) now beautiful, confident and wealthy, blackmailed Ava into becoming involved in the business of importing and selling counterfeit luxury goods.

It is a convincing tale of woe that provokes some sympathy for Ava, especially as it seems Winnie has disappeared and left her holding the bag, so to speak, and is the perfect set up from Chen for the revelations in Part II.

“I guess what I’m saying, Detective, is that Winnie convinced me that ours was a benign and victimless crime.”

I quite enjoyed learning about the counterfeit trade, though it only reinforces my opinion that the value assigned to designer gear is a spectacular rort. I agree in part that counterfeiting is a victimless crime, at least where it concerns the buyers, whose only injury is to their ego, not so much for the sweatshop workers though. The scheme the women run seems surprisingly simple if you are bold enough, and though not without its risks, it seems the financial rewards are high.

“Everyone has a price. The trick is figuring out what it is without overpaying.”

I thought the way the story turned on itself, more than once, was really quite clever. Chen occasionally leans into the western stereotypes surrounding Asians, but deliberately so I think, making a point about expectations and how Ava and Winnie used them to their advantage.

Though its subject is con artists and crime, Counterfeit is an easy, fun, stylish read. show less

Digital audiobook performed by Catherine Ho.

Most people would consider Ava Wong a successful woman. A Chinese-American with a law degree from Stanford, a husband who is a brilliant surgeon, and an adorable toddler son, she is, apparently, living the good life. But Ava hasn’t used her expensive law degree in years, and she’s at her wit’s end trying to deal with her son’s increasingly frequent tantrums. Then she runs into her old college roommate, Winnie Fang. Winnie is from mainland show more China and hoping to finally get her green card. And that is why she needs Ava’s help. All Ava has to do is go to China (with her genuine USA passport) and buy some designer handbags for Winnie’s business. What could possibly go wrong?

This is an engaging, entertaining, twisty heist involving counterfeit designer goods, a scheme to trick high-end department stores out of money, and an ever-increasing number of lies told to everyone about what is really going on.

Winnie is a master manipulator. Clearly a sociopath with no moral compass other than what is good for Winnie. Ava is torn between her loyalty to her husband and son, the pressure of hiding her illegal activities, and her desire to feel as good as Winnie’s schemes make her feel. As their enterprise gets into trouble Winnie vanishes, leaving Ava to face the authorities on her own. Will she crack? Can she, alone, pull off one more scam? Should she betray Winnie to save her own skin?

Chen goes back and forth in time to tell this story, occasionally interrupting the chronological flow to give the reader a snippet of Ava’s interview with a detective. This device is handled brilliantly by Chen. Keeping the reader off balance and guessing about what will finally happen.

Catherine Ho does a marvelous job of narrating the audiobook. She sets a good pace and I had little difficulty keeping the two women at the core of the story straight. show less

Read for my RL book group. Counterfeit luxury handbags, "model minorities," an unreliable narrator, and a failing marriage... This was fine as a summer beach read, but after finishing it, I was wondering what on earth our group would talk about for a couple of hours. I needn't have worried - 14 people will have 14 different opinions and points to raise :) This was not a favorite of the group (one member keeps track of our ratings for each book we read) but after our discussion, I recognized show more that there was a little more to it than I had initially given it credit for.

3.5 stars show less

I was predisposed to like this. I spent years as a lawyer focused on brands. In addition to negotiating manufacturing contracts in China I did anticounterfeiting work. I spent a LOT of time in Shenzhen. And also I am a person who stopped practicing law not long after becoming a mom and who had to acknowledge that I did not want to be a lawyer for reasons having nothing to do with being a parent. It has been a lot of years since that was my life but there still there should have been a lot to show more relate to here in this story of a lawyer who "took a break" from practicing law to parent and had to come to grips with the fact that she was dreading returning to practice -- and who ended up becoming part of a luxury counterfeiting ring operating between the US and China.

And yet...I did not like this. To start, I did not think the writing was particularly good. The bigger issue though was that I don't think Chen knew what she wanted to say. It is hard in one story to take on the patriarchy, American exceptionalism, inauthentic authenticity (see e.g. most everything on Social and of course the bags), tech bro "ethics", consumer culture, the way in which we in the West make villains of the Chinese businesses that thrive by ignoring intellectual property rights when in fact most counterfeits were historically made at the behest of Westerners for purchase by Westerners. (Though at this point Chinese businesses and purchasers have beaten us at our own game.) And then that gets blended with the 30-something lament of women who did all the right things, went to the right schools, got the jobs our parents wanted us to get, married the right person, had the healthy though imperfect children, and then found ourselves trapped in a world we hate because we met everyone else's expectations and never created expectations or goals of our own. Chen tries to pack all this in, but the whole things collapses under the weight of her vision and her indecision and her mediocre prose.

Postscript: By coincidence I was reading this side-by-side with Nightbitch (so far it is much better though still flawed) which are both books which start with well-educated women who leave the workforce to parent and become less than desirable beings as the struggle with the dissonance of having a developed brain and then being expected to easily adapt to the brainless work of early stage child-rearing (they try to make it an intellectual pursuit, but its not.) This is a subject near and dear to my heart, and I think there is more to be written here, but I have to say that both of these books are insanely whiny and privileged. I don't usually call books out for that, I am whiny and privileged so that would be unbecoming, but even to my eyes this was off-putting. show less