Searching for Sylvie Lee

Amy Lee is Sylvie’s sister and the second of the novel’s two protagonists. Like her sister, she is an unreliable narrator who perceives herself through a distorted framework, and the incomplete picture she paints of her identity causes her to suffer. Despite perceiving only her faults, Amy is a complex, dynamic character who shows a deep, if often incomplete, understanding of the world around her.

One of Amy’s primary points of characterization is her relationship with Sylvie. Amy is quick to share that she has always felt as though she were in her sister’s shadow: “Often there’s a dichotomy between the beautiful sister and the smart one, but in my family both of those qualities belong to Sylvie” (4). Amy thinks of herself as unintelligent, unattractive, and unimportant, especially in comparison with Sylvie. Although Amy has finished her degree, at age 26, she believes herself to be drifting through life as she struggles to make up her mind about graduate school. She wants to pursue a teaching certificate but is still living with her parents. The perspectives of Sylvie and Ma, however, reveal the gaps and flaws in Amy’s perspective, especially regarding herself. Everyone around Amy seems to see remarkable qualities in her: Amy is musically gifted. She is easygoing and likable. She is a good sister and a good daughter.

Amy is also characterized by her kindness. She, Lukas, and Sylvie all share an interest in animal welfare, and in one of the novel’s first scenes, she rescues a tiny snail that she finds perched on a loquat in their kitchen. This shared affinity for the well-being of animals large and small unites the three cousins. As Amy astutely observes, its roots are in the Buddhist faith that they all have half-inherited from their immigrant parents. This affinity thus represents yet another fragile but meaningful link to their ancestral country and its culture. Buddhism, as a motif within the narrative, often emerges in Amy’s reflections and in how she embodies its values.

Amy shows growth within the novel; her dynamic character learns from mistakes and experiences. Early on, she is characterized as romantically flighty. She proceeds quickly from crush to crush without building any kind of real relationship. Sylvie criticizes this habit, but Amy feels powerless to make any real changes. That changes after Amy develops a crush on Filip only to realize that he is gay; she reacts with compassion, and the moment prompts self-reflection. Amy eventually finds a boyfriend of sorts: a fellow classical music lover who works at the music store that she frequents. At the end of the novel, she has invited this man over to celebrate Christmas with her family, suggesting her interest in building a more meaningful connection with him. Amy misses her sister, but she is forward-looking at the story’s conclusion. She has taken Sylvie’s advice about unreliable narration to heart and learned to see herself in a more realistic light.

Ma, who is never named, is Sylvie and Amy’s mother. She married Pa in Guangdong, China and then immigrated with him to New York City. Through omission, she is also an unreliable narrator. Her efforts to hide Sylvie’s true parentage from everyone in the Lee and Tan families contribute to flawed and incomplete perspectives on the part of her daughters. When Ma does reveal her secrets, her act of truth-telling opens an opportunity for the family to heal.

Ma is initially characterized in part through her labor: She is an underpaid, unskilled worker at a laundry and is exploited by her employer. In all the years she has worked long hours in their laundry, she never receives a raise. She is casually mistreated by both her employer and their customers, and she has very little time to spend with her daughters because of her work. Her story is common among many immigrants to the United States, and Kwok drew on her own family history in writing this character. This unnamed mother is part of how Kwok speaks to the immigrant experience, writ large; the character makes clear that even in the “Beautiful Country,” as Ma calls it, life is exceedingly difficult for immigrants born in non-Western countries.

Ma’s most important characteristic is her role as a mother. Her namelessness reflects her portrayal, which is always through the lens of her relationship with her daughters. Her love for both girls runs deep, and Sylvie’s disappearance upsets her. She also recalls how painful it was that Sylvie left part of her “spirit” behind in the Netherlands. Because Sylvie spent so much time with Grandma as a girl, Ma never fully recovered her relationship with her daughter. Nonetheless, Ma is grateful to her own mother for teaching Sylvie more about Chinese culture than Ma was able to teach Amy. This gratitude and frustration also speaks to the experience of many new immigrants: Ma, buried in work and competing with the American cultural hegemony, struggled to teach Amy about Chinese culture.

At the end of the novel, Ma reveals that she had always loved Willem, who in fact fathered Sylvie. The difficulty of her relationship with Pa comes into greater relief in this scene, and the nature of their arguments becomes clearer. Amy realizes that Helena, Willem, Pa, and Ma had all known the truth about Sylvie. Ma’s secret-keeping contributes to Amy’s final understanding that no one is truly a reliable narrator of their own life.

Pa is a secondary character within the narrative. Like Ma, he is initially characterized through his job and, in this way, speaks to the exploitive labor practices that many immigrants experience. A worker at a seafood market, he is never able to fully wash the smell of fish from his hands. Notably, Sylvie is allergic to seafood, which Pa takes as a personal slight. This allergy can be read as a metaphorical commentary on Sylvie’s poor relationship with Pa and as a nod toward the fact that Pa is not her true father.

The descriptions of Pa from both Amy’s and Sylvie’s childhoods feature arguments and alcoholism. The women’s perspectives, given that Ma hides her affair, initially figure Pa as a kind of antagonist, emphasizing his coldness, his drinking, and his anger. Like this novel’s other characters, though, Pa’s behavior has nuanced origins. He always knew that Ma loved Willem, and her betrayal played a major role in the deterioration of their marriage. This new context reframes Pa’s alcoholism as self-medication and his anger as unprocessed grief.

Grandma is Sylvie and Amy’s grandmother and Ma’s mother. An immigrant to the Netherlands, Grandma has never felt at home there, and her character speaks to the theme of The Cultural Dissonance of Immigration. Although she has spent much of her life with Helena and Willem, Grandma and Helena are only distantly related. Grandma has always seen Helena’s unkindness toward Sylvie as emotional abuse, thinking poorly of Helena for her unwillingness to treat Sylvie with decency: In Grandma’s words, Helena “has eaten vinegar” (120).

In spite of her own feelings of cultural dissonance, Grandma does manage to teach her granddaughter about their culture. Sylvie’s command of Grandma’s language and cultural knowledge are more in-depth than that of her sister. Both the rag doll, Tasha, that Grandma makes for Sylvie and the heirloom jewels that Grandma has secretly kept become symbolic within the narrative. Namely, both objects speak to how challenging cultural preservation is, especially in communities where immigrants work long hours and their children, like Sylvie in New York, long for assimilation and the Americanization of their identities.

Grandma is one of Sylvie’s main sources of love and familial affection, and the depth of their bond is apparent. Sylvie’s relationship with Grandma is one of the few relationships in which Sylvie feels truly seen; Grandma is a kind of “home” for Sylvie in a way that neither the Netherlands nor the United States can ever be. Grandma’s love for Sylvie is so great that, although she wants to see her granddaughter before she dies and is intent on leaving her jewelry to Sylvie rather than Helena, Grandma nonetheless arranges for her own assisted suicide rather than allow Sylvie to see her die. It is her final act of kindness toward a girl who was perhaps more daughter than granddaughter to her. Although Sylvie does not initially understand this act as such, she ultimately feels a kind of gratitude toward her grandmother.

Helena Tan is Ma’s distant cousin. She lives with her husband, Willem, and son, Lukas, in a small village in the Netherlands. Helena is initially characterized by her severe unkindness toward Sylvie, which escalates to an unexplained cruelty that veers into the territory of emotional abuse. Until it is revealed that her husband secretly fathered Sylvie, Helena’s behavior seems misplaced: Sylvie had always been a dutiful, obedient girl and was a close and loyal friend to Helena’s son.

Helena’s behavior, given its presentation first without context, serves the theme of Flawed and Incomplete Perspective. When Sylvie left the Netherlands for the United States and was sad to say goodbye to Willem, Helena hissed: “You have your own Pa, you little fool. Don’t you understand?” (60). At the time, the comment seems like another attack in a long chain of comments implying that Sylvie is a burden and lacks gratitude. In fact, Helena knows that her own husband is the girl’s biological parent. Although Helena’s cruelty is still morally reprehensible, within the context of betrayal and secret children, it is less surprising. Helena does show signs of contrition at the end of the narrative, letting go of the anger that she has held onto throughout Sylvie’s life. This change of heart is most evident in the gesture of Helena giving Sylvie’s rag doll, which she had hidden, to Ma and Amy. The treasured doll, made by Grandma as a symbol of both her love and the family’s cultural connection to China, thus returns to Sylvie’s family along with Grandma’s heirloom jewelry.

Helena’s characterization also speaks to the theme of immigration and cultural dissonance. She and Willem own a Chinese restaurant in the Netherlands. However, because society there is so culturally homogenous, the Dutch do not often differentiate between different Asian nationalities. She and Willem must therefore offer Japanese and Indonesian as well as Chinese dishes. Helena is hardworking and successful, and she and Willem have a nice home. Nonetheless, they will always be outsiders in the Netherlands. Although the novel focuses on this cultural dynamic as a challenge for Lukas when he is a young student, neither Helena nor Willem seem to have any Dutch friends.

Willem Tan, Helena’s husband, is first characterized through his silence. Helena seems to be the more dominant of the two, and it is her personality that is most on display when they are together. Although he does not speak as much as many of the characters and is secondary to much of the novel’s plot, his quiet presence is highly relevant to the theme of Flawed and Incomplete Perspective. The novel initially hints that he has a predatory, even pedophilic relationship with Sylvie. This half-claim is based on his overly affectionate physical gestures toward young Sylvie and on his parting gift to her: earrings that he claims are crystal, but that even Helena can see are really diamonds set in platinum. Because Sylvie is so troubled, it is conceivable that part of her trauma lies in childhood sexual abuse.

In fact, Willem is Sylvie’s father, a fact that he deduced because the two share a unique birthmark. Readers learn that part of the reason Sylvie stayed so long in the Netherlands was that Willem did not want to give up his daughter. Of course, Helena too saw the birthmark, and although she is deeply wounded, she directs her anger at Sylvie rather than at Willem. Even at the novel’s conclusion, Helena admits that she still loves her husband, even though Willem knew that he was fostering resentment in Helena by loving Sylvie so dearly. Although Sylvie never shakes her feelings of alienation and loneliness, Willem is a character who shows that Sylvie was loved, by almost everyone around her, certainly by Willem, Lukas, Amy, and Ma. However, his silence, both more generally and in terms of him keeping his secret, further indicates the harm that limited perspective can inflict.

Lukas Tan is Willem and Helena’s son and, as far as he and Sylvie know at the start of the story, Sylvie’s distant cousin. He is a photographer who lives in the Netherlands. He travels internationally for work and rents a small garage apartment from his parents. Although he would like to move out and wishes that he had a home of his own that Sylvie could have visited, it is inexpensive and convenient to remain with Helena and Willem. Like Sylvie and Amy, Lukas is kind to animals; he has a cat named Cous Cous whom he rescued while on assignment in Turkey. Helena watches Cous Cous when he is abroad and even prepares homemade fish for the cat. Lukas maintains a close childhood relationship with Estelle that initially has the appearance of romance. Like many other interpersonal dynamics in the narrative, however, things are not as they seem, and their bond is platonic.

Much of Lukas’s characterization happens through his relationships. As a child, he was Sylvie’s closest friend. Although they have not seen each other since they were nine, he remains in many ways her closest relationship. As adults, the two develop a mutual attraction that each realizes is love. Even after he realizes that they are actually half-siblings, Lukas is not bothered by the possibility of an incestuous relationship. Sylvie, however, is deeply disturbed by the discovery, and her rejection devastates him. Although Lukas is the one to call and report her disappearance, he is visibly shaken when her body is discovered. There is forgiveness for him from the family at the end of the novel, and like everyone else in the Lee and Tan households, his questionable behavior is rooted in unresolved pain and hidden trauma.

Like Sylvie, Amy, and Filip, Lukas has experienced much racism in his majority-white society. Although the other characters offer more detail about past experiences, Lukas does reveal that he was the target of racist taunting from classmates as a child that escalated to physical altercations.

Estelle is a childhood friend of Sylvie, Lukas, and Filip, and in her own way contributes to the issues with perspective in the novel. She is physically affectionate with Lukas in a way that reads as romantic, so much so that the two appear to be a couple. However, many of her interactions in general seem sexualized, and there are times when her flirtatious energy appears to be directed toward Filip and even Sylvie. Although her character is secondary and mostly furthers the action between Lukas, Filip, and Sylvie, Estelle also plays an important role as a purveyor of information. She might not openly reveal the secrets that lurk below the surface of this narrative, but when directly asked, she is more willing to shed light on the complexity of her friends’ relationships.

Estelle is a pilot, and although she is highly skilled, professional, and polished, she has always experienced gender-based discrimination in the male-dominated field of aviation. Although white, her character does play a role in the theme of The Harm of Everyday Racism and Prejudice. That is, as part of a general discussion of societal prejudice against people of color and women, Estelle both shares her experiences of sexism and affirms Lukas’s and Sylvie’s experience of anti-Asian racism in the Netherlands. She is keenly aware of how such prejudices underpin Dutch society, particularly in small villages like the one where she, Lukas, Sylvie, and Filip grew up. Kwok is interested in how micro-aggressions and small acts of racism go largely unnoticed among the white populations in the United States and Europe; Estelle is a rare exemplar of the way that white people can (and should) understand and call out prejudice.

Filip is a professional cellist in the Netherlands and was a childhood friend of Estelle, Lukas, and Sylvie. He, too, is an unreliable narrator, and he masks his gay identity with serial womanizing. Filip deeply cares for Lukas, Sylvie, and, by extension, Amy, although he is not always open about his feelings.

Filip is an accomplished cellist, and through the lessons that he provides Sylvie, she is able to let go of her perfectionism for the first time in her life and experience the joy of pursuing an interest solely for fun. In this way, he helps her find a small measure of happiness against the backdrop of a life she believes to be unraveling. He takes his music seriously, and his artistry is heartfelt, technically gifted, and highly accomplished.

Although Sylvie believes herself to be involved in a flirtation with Filip, Filip is gay and has always been in love with Lukas. Filip confessed his feelings once when the two were younger, but Lukas’s aghast reaction shamed Filip into hiding his sexuality. Filip would remain closeted even in adulthood, although he admits that it cost him his (heterosexual) marriage.

Filip can relate to Sylvie’s experiences of racism in the Netherlands; having come from a Jewish family, he too has experienced prejudice. His mother told him to learn to live with the antisemitism, to keep his “head down,” and to “never trust anyone outside of the family” (160). In conversing with Sylvie, Filip overtly mentions how racism adds to generational trauma, an important undercurrent in both this and other novels by Kwok.