DNF
Genre: Historical: American, Romance
This RITA® Reader Challenge 2017 review was written by Erika S. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Mainstream Fiction with a Central Romance category.
The summary:
In 1903 San Francisco’s Chinatown, slavery, polygamy, and rampant prostitution are thriving— just blocks away from the city’s elite, progressive society. Wealthy and well-connected, Will Firestone enters the mysterious enclave with an eye toward expanding his shipping business. What he finds there will astonish him. With the help of an exotic young widow and a gifted teenage orphan, he embarks on a journey of self-discovery, where lust, love and tragedy will change his life forever.
A stand-alone novel, The Depth of Beauty is the latest addition to the dual genre series “Sinner’s Grove,” which chronicles the family and friends of a world-famous artists’ retreat on the northern California coast. The stories follow both historical and contemporary tracks and can be read separately or together for greater depth. Other titles in the series include the award-winning The Art of Love, Sinner’s Grove and The Lair.
Here is Erika S.'s review:
NB: Trigger warnings for the below description racism and threat of rape.
Well, I picked this book to review because I was late to the sign-up sheet and it was the only book left. Which wasn’t maybe the best sign, but you never know with these things, and part of my idea with this challenge was to get out of my comfort zone and try something new.
The Depth of Beauty is not the book to make me reconsider my comfort zone. Give me my comfort zone!
Set in San Francisco in the early twentieth century, the book follows Will Firestone, the eldest son of a prominent San Francisco family as he … does some stuff, I guess. Part of the story involves him becoming a better person by getting to know the Chinese immigrants living in Chinatown and learning about what it’s like to not be rich and privileged…soo, yeah.
He meets and falls in love with Tam Shee Low, a gross stereotype of a Chinese woman with bound feet (which he is super patronizing about). Later, Will slowly discovers feelings for Mandy Culpepper, a farm girl his sister adopts at age fifteen after her father is killed on Will’s job site.
I’m going to be honest – I didn’t finish this book. It was so long and so bad! Honestly I almost gave up right at the beginning, maybe twenty pages in, when Will first meets Mandy. Meetings are supposed to be a big deal in romantic stories, no? Anyway. Will goes to visit the family who have taken Mandy in after her father’s death. The wife (who might have a name? I don’t know) wants Mandy to stay and help her take care of their young children.
The husband, Dell, asks to speak to Will privately – he has a man thing to say:
Look, I’m a God-fearin’ man. I got a pretty little wife and three good kids. But I’m human. And the Good Book says we got to keep ourselves away from temptation whenever we can. We got to put up guardrails against the Devil. I’m not sayin’ Mandy’s the Devil, I never would. But I’m sayin’ you can’t spend too much time with her and not see how doggone beautiful she is.
The girl, by the way, is a fifteen year old who has just lost her father and is now a homeless orphan. Who has showed no interest in Dell. So I’m pretty sure what Dell is saying here, ultimately, is get this girl out of my house or one of these days I’m just going to rape her on account of her bein’ so doggone beautiful. Gross, Dell.
Now, I’m going to be honest here and say that I actually love romances with a hot older dude. I even love those slightly old-school guardian-ward romances (sorry). But they only work for me when the hot older dude is appropriately angsty about whether the younger heroine will want to be with a man so much older than her, and where he does everything in his power to minimize the power differential between them. Also he has to be hot and compelling as a character, so … yeah.
Mandy herself comes off as a ridiculous stereotype of a country girl with some sort of a running thing about chickens, only later in the novel turning into a frustrating Mary Sue-type character, beautiful and all-capable and totally devoid of flaws or characterization generally. She has a first-person journal running through the book, which adds little and mainly reviews events that have already happened.
And then there is Tam Shee Low, the other point of the love triangle, and the gross, racist, White Saviour garbage that taints all of Will’s interactions with her and literally every other Chinese character. Will meets Tam Shee through a businessman named Cheung ti Chu, a sleazeball who wants Tam Shee as his second wife. Cheung manufactures a reason for Will to meet her so he can show off his hot, submissive future wife. Instead, Will decides to save her, and sets up some kind of sewing school for Chinese girls so that Tam Shee can be an instructor and not have to marry Cheung. Then he falls in love with her, while also worrying if their two spheres can ever meet, what with her … not knowing about Christmas. For realsies (also, he just assumes she doesn’t know about Christmas, he doesn’t do anything crazy like ask her about it).
The Chinese immigrants of Chinatown are exoticized and othered in every page of this book. They are prostitutes and Chinese mafia lords and opium addicts and polygamists and slave owners – unless they are the beautiful and helpless victims of such, in which case they just need to be saved by the friendly Mission lady and/or Will Firestone. The white inhabitants of San Francisco are Hollywood-style racists, who denigrate the Chinese and threaten to demolish Chinatown entirely. Unless they are Will Firestone and friends, in which case they are the only ones who can save Chinatown for its colourful, exotic inhabitants.
Don’t read this book. Seriously. It’s boring, it’s racist, all the characters are horrible. It’s long (479 pages) and it feels even longer. It’s not even bad in that so-bad-it’s-good way, where it’s bad, but at least you learned a new, fascinating way a book can be bad (like with dinosaurs!). It’s just bad. I tried to finish it – I tried so hard for you! I got shockingly far too, thanks to a whole lot of skimming. But it was grim, and I seemed to be getting no closer to the end, and I imagined myself like, reading and reading and hating every moment and never finishing, like some kind of literary Sisyphus. So I stopped. Don’t let my sacrifices be in vain! Don’t read this book.
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Yes to all this. Yes yes yes and thank goodness this community is here. Smart Bitches you keep me sane.
I should point one thing out about how the RITA judging works. If you enter a book into the contest, you have to judge in the first round. 2000 books are entered before the cutoff. Each author who entered gets a pile of 10-12 books to score. Most of what I got to read this year was really mediocre but when you let authors self-enter, that’s to be expected. Anything that scores high enough goes on to be a finalist and then those are judged by a smaller jury.
The RWA has put out a call for suggestions on how to improve the contest. (was in the email newsletter a few months ago) On the one hand they want every book across the varied spectrum of romance to have a shot. otoh that means racist garbage has a shot. Ugh.
I would love to see a non-racist historical SF Chinatown romance by the way, historical writers! Hint hint!
Well reading this comment section made me feel a lot better. I was worried I’d been too harsh – I know it’s much easier to pan a book then it is to be constructive. But I went in all unsuspecting – I didn’t even read that awful blurb until the end -and expecting something better from a RITA finalist, like everyone’s been saying, so I was not prepared for it to be…what it was. I’m especially grateful for the confirmation from @SB Sarah it wasn’t just me!
I enjoyed Jenn Bennett’s Roaring Twenties series, also set in San Francisco and containing a fairly diverse cast of characters. One of the MCs in the third book, I believe, is a Chinese-American man. Might be a good palate cleanser! (Of course, now I feel slightly stressed–like, I think the representations are fairly unproblematic, but what if I’m wrong? What if I’m part of the problem???)
I’m not sure if changing the rules would be helpful, because the problem will still remain. Some members of RWA find representation like this A-okay. Some people see a POC described as exotic and they don’t blink. We work in an industry where one of the biggest and most well-known publishers will turn to their non-AOC to write diversely instead of approaching actual POC first. (POC that actively write for them.) That is our industry. The problem is systematic. The problem is within the romance community.
Changing the rules might be a good first step but it’s not going to fix much as long as the community as a whole continues to praise problematic books.
Now, I’m going to be honest here and say that I actually love romances with a hot older dude. I even love those slightly old-school guardian-ward romances (sorry). But they only work for me when the hot older dude is appropriately angsty about whether the younger heroine will want to be with a man so much older than her, and where he does everything in his power to minimize the power differential between them. Also he has to be hot and compelling as a character, so … yeah.
_____
Oh man I feel less weird about my favorite pairing being Harry/Molly in the Dresden files now.
Is uh…there a list of books you would uhm, recommend for those who echo this interest?
@Erika: I know that feeling well, and it is most certainly not just you! Thank you again for this review. You’re entirely right that critical responses are difficult to write, and I am very appreciative of your work. Thank you.
NOPE. NO THANK YOU, NOPE to this book. Thank you to Erika S for not only reading most of the book, but also for writing a great review. At first (in the first paragraph of the review), I wondered if it was overly harsh, but as I kept reading, you kept showing examples of the serious WTFery in this book, and by the end of your review, I was totally with you: NO, do NOT read this book.
So. I am Chinese AND I live in California AND I love our state history. Imagine if I’d picked up this book, really interested and hoping for a good, meaty (hur hur) book with substance and depth?! There would have been a book thrown across the room, for sure. This book is a prime example of why I actively shy away from Asian characters in historical settings. Wayyyy too many ways to have to read something wretched. And that’s not great; I want to be excited to see myself and my home state’s history represented in fiction for the larger world to read! But not like this, man. I’m glad SBTB and the Bitchery gets it, even if RITA and RWA don’t.
@Cecilia – authors who enter their books for consideration read books outside of the category in which they’ve submitted, yes?
Once the first round’s done is there a second round of reading to narrow down to finalists? If so, who’re the readers in that second round?
I’m astounded that this book got this far in the process (that Nazi hero one blew my mind as well).
@ Jo
Sorry, I can only think of old ones right now, like Georgette Heyers These Old Shades (which was the very first romance novel I ever read). I’m sure I’ve read other ones though.
@Jo: There was about “Silver Foxes,” about gray/silver-haired heroes that also touched on May-December romances.
^Welp, that’s embarrassing.
@Jo, here’s the link to that post: http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2017/04/rec-league-silver-foxes/
@Erika S.
@Mina Lobo
Thank you both! I’ll be adding all of these to my “to read” pile.
Thank you, Erika S., for taking one for the team. I was turned off by “good Christian man” because that always seems to be code for “I wanna do something horrible anyway” and I am sick of that kind of immature faith.
I do have one question. It’s 2017. How does an overtly racist novel still get published these days?
I’ve been a judge in the RITAs twice now, and both times I’ve gotten books that were offensive for one or more reasons, and I rated them accordingly.
However, I wonder if those scores just end up being the dropped low score? Maybe the RITAs need to stop dropping the high and low scores because maybe, just maybe, people are rating books low because they are actually bad and harmful and offensive.
Thank you for posting this review and alerting me to this WTFery. While I can’t change the romance industry overnight, knowing about blatantly racist books helps me to identify authors and publishers that are problematic. As a reader I can choose where to spend my money, and now I know one more place to avoid. That said, we’ve got a long way to go.
Gloriamarie,
I can’t find references to books by any other author from this publisher, so I’m fairly certain it was self-published.
@Vanessa I was wondering the same thing.
It would be great if RWA could include a way judges could flag an entry and leave a comment explaining why a book was scored low because of offensive representation and such. That way, even if the low score and high score are dropped, if a book finishes in the top but is flagged, a panel could review the book prior to putting it on the list.
There’s already a way to denote whether or not a book “is a romance” and if it’s flagged by enough judges it is automatically kicked out.
Erika S. you are doing the lord’s work by making it as far as you did in this garbage book and bringing awareness to how harmful these kinds of depictions in romance are. I’m Filipino and usually if I want to see some representation in romance, I just read one of the many awesome Filipina romance authors because I don’t want to read about someone who looks like me described as ‘exotic’. Plus, like Cecilia mentioned above, how awesome would it be to get a San Francisco Chinatown historical romance by someone who gets it? That would be amazing!
@Vanessa,
I am not a member of RWA but I agree 100% the low score should not be dropped. I also think RITA judges should perhaps be allowed to DNF a book and still rate it as offensive. When the book with the Nazi concentration camp commandant came out, I tried to read it in order to be able to write a proper review, but was unable to finish read beyond the first 35% as it was the most triggering book I’ve ever tried to read (I’m Jewish and a grandchild of Holocaust survivors). Likewise, I cannot imagine an Asian-American judge making it all the way to the end of a book such as this one. The insistence that RITA judges must read the entire book probably causes those most sensitive to the offensive depiction to self-select out of reading the most harmful books.
I am Asian American and I have not read the book. But if I was writing a book outside my familiar universe, I would hope to be very careful how I portray these characters and to do research on it. Run it by someone from that culture. (Who would have said “Are you fucking kidding me?”) The author and screening committees sadly (horrifically) may not have thought it was offensive.
BTW, I loathe the “perfect” Asian stereotypes as well. I have a badass Japanese American Mom who basically taught us not to sit there and wait for things to happen. You make things happen.
@ Stephanie: can you list your favorite Filipina romance authors?
Thanks!
And I must say how grateful I am that the Bitchery exists.
It has always been a struggle to find diverse romances that don’t recycle tired and problematic tropes to tell a story, regardless of the time period (see Beverly Jenkins and Alyssa Cole for examples of how to tell a love story set during America’s most racist times; these stories are beautifully told without degrading the diverse cast of characters, so it can be done, RITA judges!).
And I know that this has been commented on repeatedly, but seriously, WTF, RITA?! How did a book featuring a Nazi actually became a finalist? These questionable finalists are further proof of why I turn to SB for book recommendations.
@Jolie Yes! Jay E. Tria, Mina V. Esguerra (who I think was on the podcast?), Carla de Guzman…there are quite a few! Most write contemporary so I’m still looking for a historical but I try to follow the authors I like on Twitter to get some good book recs.
I also agree with your points that it is baffling that judges don’t recognize how historical romances can be done so much better than something like this (or the Nazi book…still in shock about that one…).
NT, I am not at all surprised that you think it is self-published. Some of the most offensive stuff I’ve ever laid eyes on has been self-published. So much so that I try to avoid self-published authors.
Ew, yuck. Thanks, reviewer, for taking one for the team.
Contrast this mess with Kerry Greenwood’s handling of Lin Chung and his family in 1920s Australia, where all the Chinese characters are individuals, and real people.
@Gloriamarie I agree about the self pubbed authors. I hate the be judgemental but I just don’t read self pubbed authors unless I get a good recommendation first.
I read a pretty large number of both, and the source of the publishing isn’t an obvious indicator of quality.
Moreover, for authors of color, self publishing is often the best way to reach readers because many have found that traditional paths are blocked, uninterested, or offer limited options. In other words, self publication is not the most prominent problem here.
If I were writing a story about San Francisco Chinatown in the early 20th Century, I wouldn’t have told the story from the POV of a white man. I would have at least one Chinese person as a significant POV character. Just for starters…
I’ve looked at the author’s website, as well as the sample. As far as I can tell she genuinely believes she’s being sympathetic to an immigrant group by portraying rampant discrimination (and she makes the parallel with present-day anti-immigrant sentiments) without stopping to think about how her portrayals of the actual immigrants in question are offensive and cliched. Would it maybe be a good idea to reach out to her and alert her to the reactions on this site, so she learns something? As I recall the Nazi-romance author gave a classic #sorrynotsorry response when people called her on her work, but on the other hand, Mary Balogh responded with grace and dignity to similar criticisms on this very site, and the conversation around some of the comments about The Zookeeper’s Wife here remained courteous, although it closed abruptly. So Ms. Michaels’ reaction could go either way.
#SB Sarah, “self publication is not the most prominent problem here.”
No, it may not be. Of the self-published novels I’ve read, too many of them read to **me** as if they were first drafts and the number of errors in grammar, spelling, syntax made me think these books had not been professionally edited. Or maybe not even read by a beta reader.
I have an acquaintance who writes what he calls science fiction porn. His stories are intriguing but his only editor is his wife. I offered to edit at no charge out of friendship something he is ***selling*** but he refused because he didn’t want to be bothered replacing the copies out there.
It is my strongly held opinion, that if authors wants us to part with our money for their books, then there is an implied contract that they owe us the best possible quality they can produce. They don’t owe us Pulitzer Prize quality writing (unless they are just that good) but they do owe us proper formatting, grammar, paragraphing, spelling, and syntax at the very least.
Too many self-published books did not meet my minimum standard.
For that matter, too many free books often fail to meet my minimum standard.
Some people are not incensed by poor formatting, bad grammar, incorrect spelling etc, but I just cannot tolerate it.
Oh, dear. Thank you Erika for the review, and for saving the rest of us from reading this mess. I’ll admit I was also late to the sign-up sheet and only a few books were left, and since the summaries were unappealing to me I decided to give it a pass this year. I had been thinking that maybe I was too picky, but after reading this review I’m just breathing a sigh of relief.
I’m seconding Jenn Bennett’s Roaring Twenties as a palate cleanser. It’s also set in San Francisco and the third novel (which can be read as a standalone I think) has a Chinese hero. Full disclosure, I’m white and not from the US so I don’t always spot problematic content, but I thought they were okay.
If historical writers are so fired-up determined to portray historical accuracy, then all heroines should be considered property, seen but not heard. The heroes should pretty well all be rapey, barbaric(not the romanticized barbarians), and misogynists. There should be lots of descriptions of various body odors and unhygienic living conditions(people invented platform shoes for a reason… that wasn’t mud in the streets).
“Historical Accuracy” isn’t a defense when it’s *selective*. It’s a seriously flawed attempt at justification.
(I read another of her San Francisco historicals. I did finish it because I had to, but had to bribe myself with Game Of Thrones to get through it. Read a chapter, spend some time with Jon Snow… And they’re definitely self-published. If you search “Red Trumpet Press” -Michaels, there’s one hit. And I can’t tell what that page is at all. Uncle Google definitely couldn’t tell me how to submit to Red Trumpet Press. It’s a method of disguising SP books.)
I went ahead and clicked on Sarah’s link for a sample of this novel, just to get a taste. I’m a well-seasoned, pow-me-in-the-mouth writing contest judge (Golden Heart, Published Daphne, etc.) and a couple things struck me only eight clicks in… I stopped at the 25% mark of the sample. And yes, I do read through all of the entries sent my way. It just happens that I was glad I didn’t have to do it this time.
1.) The hero’s voice lacks depth, compassion and is overall passive. By passive, I mean he’s the type things happen to, not the type who creates outcomes. Sure, Will cleverly suggests the “bad” food be donated, yet he says nothing to his mother about what he’s thinking in the scene, in the moment…and is resigned to accepting things as they are when he sends the chef that “what can we do about her” look.
2.) Based on point 1, the “hero-believability” factor is compromised. I.e., Will’s narrative doesn’t hold the conviction (or the promise of a shift) modern readers need in order to believe he is capable of “ah-ha” change. Will hands over a box of food to Suen AFTER his narrative indicates the “donation” will be transacted at his new tailor’s shop. That action is pragmatic, calculated, lazy, and the way it is delivered–condescending.
3.) Overall characterization is in need of development. The SECOND Will realizes the condition of the food, the modern reader expects him to DO something that reflects his internal reaction. But Will doesn’t. And by doing nothing, saying nothing, not offering to take the food back or even thinking in terms of Suen’s tedious position as a businessman seeking to retain a client, etc., he’s stamped as a pompous ass in our eyes.
4.) It is obvious the author intended to balance or merge elite mindsets/stereotypes that existed within the era, with modern progressive ideals to set Will apart from his class. But how can we sympathize with someone who refers to his tailor’s friends/family as “your people,” and LIES about having “extra” food while having just explained to the reader the shop is the most convenient unloading dock for unwanted leftovers he didn’t have the balls to defend in the first place?
For all these reasons, the beginning shows little promise. I was a member of RWA for a long time until recently, and this is an example of why I bypassed paying membership dues last year.
It’s a fallacy that women were the property of their husbands or male guardians. In the past, it went right down to the individual. If the father was a bully, he would exert all the power he had. If he was an enlightened man, then his daughters would have far more freedom, sometimes including independent incomes.
For a start, the crime of uxoricide (wife killing) is on the statute books. It’s murder, same as every other kind, and the husband can (and was) hanged for it.
Secondly, as many detailed and well researched reports show (for instance, the one authored by Amanda Vickery, and the one by Dr. Inglis) that married women could own their own property. In fact, recent research has gone to show that before the Victorian era, women were a lot more free than has been supposed. A blog post is not the place to go into detail, but the reports are there if you’re interested.
Women could not represent themselves in court until recent times, but women of property would buy themselves a lawyer. If they married, their property could be put into a trust, which they controlled, but their husband couldn’t touch. That was another reason why hasty marriages were so condemned that a law was made to stop it.
The Victorians eroded the freedom women had previously enjoyed. It ate away at it, using the law and custom, in much the same way that women were encouraged to get back into the kitchen in the 1950s. Women had to fight to regain what they had lost.
Part of the problem, and I know of no way to say this without offending some folks, is that authors submit their own and they judge, as is indicated, 10-12 books. By their standards, as in what they write so if they write books that are lacking, they are likely to vote high books that are lacking.
In other words, bad work can lead to bad work becoming a finalist. It used to be that the same bestselling authors constantly won and while I love seeing self-pubbed showcasing nicely, there is no barrier to entering or judging.
If an entering author thinks their work is great even though it’s a head-hopping mess and tells more than shows, what do you think they’ll think of the books they judge? They’ll judge to THEIR standards and if their standards aren’t high, well, we get some of the finalists we get.
For the last two years (maybe more but can’t recall), I’ve seen more and more books rated by the Bitchery in lows Cs and below. To me, that says a lot because you ladies do know good writing and that while the story is key, the writing needs to be there too. I vote that you all judge the RITAs. 🙂
Actually, that has some merit, if you think about it. Not just here but other “expert” readers in the romance genre (Dear Author is one). If you all judged, I’d trust that my entry would get a fair scoring, and I bet the quality of finalists would be higher.
However, while I love the idea that the RITA is supposed to be judged by best of the best, that’s not what’s happening. We aren’t getting the best of the best judging. We are getting anyone-can-enter judging.
I also agree the practice of dropping highest and lowest should go away and judges allowed to DNF, but only if the judge pool changed.
#Ann T, Thank you for that detailed explanation. It seems to me there is an inherent conflict of interest in allowing people to vote on their own books. My first thought is that authors should recuse themselves from voting for their own novels but that won’t solve the problem that they’ll still judge to THEIR standards.
“For the last two years (maybe more but can’t recall), I’ve seen more and more books rated by the Bitchery in lows Cs and below.”
I commented on this last year as I noticed that very few of the books were getting marks as high as Bs. I know the two I reviewed received either C- or D, I forget which.
“I vote that you all judge the RITAs.” Of course, some of the readers here are authors of books we review, so maybe recuse the authors. Otherwise, I think it is an excellent idea.
Thank you Ann T for explaining, I never knew how the RITAs worked until this year. It does seem like their criteria for the awards need tweaking.
Bitchery-judged awards, though? Sign me up!