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Fiona and Jane

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Paperback
$17.00 US
5"W x 7.7"H x 0.79"D   (12.7 x 19.6 x 2.0 cm) | 8 oz (221 g) | 24 per carton
On sale Jan 03, 2023 | 304 Pages | 9780593296066
Sales rights: World
A TIME, NPR, VOGUE, OPRAH DAILY, AND VULTURE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (SO FAR)

One of TIME’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2022

“Ho's debut work is the perfect modern example of great American fiction. . . . You will love it.” —Jake Tapper

“Intimate, cinematic. . . . The world Ho creates between the two women feels like one friend reading the other’s story, wishing she were there.”
The New York Times Book Review

“[Fiona and Jane] is about an incredible lifelong friendship between two Asian American women growing up in Southern California—absolutely adored that book.” —Ailsa Chang, NPR’s “All Things Considered”

“Intricately rendered. . . . Fiona and Jane celebrates a woman’s ability to be late, to show up in their own lives when and where they want to, to change their minds, to be lonely and to be in love, and to be respected regardless.” —The Washington Post

A witty, warm, and irreverent book that traces the lives of two young Taiwanese American women as they navigate friendship, sexuality, identity, and heartbreak over two decades.


Best friends since second grade, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen explore the lonely freeways and seedy bars of Los Angeles together through their teenage years, surviving unfulfilling romantic encounters, and carrying with them the scars of their families' tumultuous pasts. Fiona was always destined to leave, her effortless beauty burnished by fierce ambition—qualities that Jane admired and feared in equal measure. When Fiona moves to New York and cares for a sick friend through a breakup with an opportunistic boyfriend, Jane remains in California and grieves her estranged father's sudden death, in the process alienating an overzealous girlfriend. Strained by distance and unintended betrayals, the women float in and out of each other's lives, their friendship both a beacon of home and a reminder of all they've lost.

In stories told in alternating voices, Jean Chen Ho's debut collection peels back the layers of female friendship—the intensity, resentment, and boundless love—to probe the beating hearts of young women coming to terms with themselves, and each other, in light of the insecurities and shame that holds them back.

Spanning countries and selves, Fiona and Jane is an intimate portrait of a friendship, a deep dive into the universal perplexities of being young and alive, and a bracingly honest account of two Asian women who dare to stake a claim on joy in a changing, contemporary America.

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY VOGUE * USA TODAY * TIME * OPRAH DAILY * PARADE * THE WASHINGTON POST * BUZZFEED * GOOD HOUSEKEEPING * MARIE CLAIRE * FORTUNE * GLAMOUR * W MAGAZINE * NYLON * BUSTLE * POPSUGAR * ELECTRIC LITERATURE * THE RUMPUS * DEBUTIFUL * AND MORE!

The Night Market

 

My last evening in Taiwan, my father wanted to show me Shilin Night Market. We rode the subway, transferring at Taipei Main Station for the northbound red line. Saturday night, the market was jammed with people strolling up and down the arteries of the main thoroughfare. Baba and I dragged along with the crowd, pausing here and there to browse the wares. We'd made up from the fight in the car driving down Yangmingshan yesterday, at least for now. He'd promised to rethink the new university contract and seriously consider coming back to the States for good.

 

The air was saturated by the scent of grilled meat, custard pudding and red bean pies, propane fumes and human sweat. Deep house music pumped out of every other storefront speaker, as vendors shouted into megaphones pointed at the passing hordes: Two-for-one ladies cotton underwear! Genuine leather sandals for men! Motorola flip phones unlocked here! DVDs! CDs! Come take a look!

 

At the food section in the back of the market, Baba stood in line to order us bowls of oyster vermicelli while I staked out seats at the communal tables set up in the center of the stalls. We dipped into the noodles. The oysters floated on top, fat and glistening like polished jewels.

 

"Listen, mei. There's one more person who wanted to see you before you leave," Baba said, between bites.

 

I asked if it was another relative. If Baba sensed my irritation, he didn't show it.

 

Before this trip, I hadn't seen my father in two and a half years, since he took this job. In the last week-my spring break-I'd barely spent any time with him alone. Every day, another banquet dinner with dozens of cousins, uncles and aunties, family friends who asked if I remembered them from the last time I visited the island, when I was just a kid.

 

"You can call him Uncle Lee," he said. One of his college buddies, my father explained. For a second, he looked like he had more to add. "He's been a good friend to me," he said finally.

 

"That's him over there now." Baba lifted a hand and waved.

 

The man waved back and made his way to our table. He moved with the compressed energy of a wrestler, his chin slightly down, arms swinging deliberately, as if ready to grapple at a moment's notice. Lee wore a red tank top with a cartoon duck printed on the chest, the hem tucked into a pair of tight black jeans, an FOB outfit that would've caught stares back home, but here he looked cool, I thought.

 

"My baby daughter," Baba said.

 

"Uncle Lee," I said in Mandarin. "Pleased to meet you."

 

"Sit down, sit down!" He offered his hand to me, and I shook it. "A big lady, tall like Old Shen here."

 

"She takes after her mother more than me-"

 

"I should hope so, with your teeth," said Lee, and they both laughed. He extracted a blue handkerchief from the nylon fanny pack around his waist and wiped down his face, which gleamed with sweat. "Much hotter here than LA, right? And it's only March." He gestured toward the empty Styrofoam bowls on the table. "You like Taiwanese food? Even the broiled intestines in the vermicelli?"

 

"My daughter eats very well."

 

"Wah! Like you, then." Lee jabbed a finger into my father's side.

 

"Uncle Lee, have you eaten yet?"

 

Lee smiled. "She's quite mature. Good manners." He glanced at my father approvingly. "All foreign-born girls not this way. Sometimes you hear stories about overseas children."

 

I felt my cheeks warm under Lee's scrutiny.

 

"And your Mandarin isn't bad," he said. "I thought your father was exaggerating, going on about 'My daughter Jane doing this and that, memorized the periodic table when she was only twelve, super number one classical piano.'"

 

"My mother stuck me in Saturday Chinese school for years," I said. "Baba bribed me with McDonald's."

 

"Lee and I used to compete in the university badminton courts," Baba said. I was glad for the subject change. "When I moved back here, I went looking for a game at those same courts, and I saw him there, believe it or not."

 

"In our college days, the girls crowded the bleachers," Lee said. "Just to catch a glimpse of your father in those white athletic shorts."

 

"Lee! Don't make up stories."

 

"Sometimes he even played bare chest," Lee said, grinning. He pantomimed pulling off his shirt with a flourish of his arms. "Quite a scene you created, brother."

 

"You, Baba?"

 

"Not me," he replied. "You must be remembering someone else, Lee."

 

"Don't be so modest," said Lee. "Your father was the school prince."

 

Baba shook his head.

 

"We all knew he'd be the one to go to America."

 

"I was lucky, that's all," said my father.

 

"Luck!" Lee exclaimed. "You're brilliant. You worked hard-"

 

"I made certain choices," Baba said. "Left or right-"

 

"Like deciding to move back here," I said, with more force than I intended. "And stay here," I added. "Or was that luck?"

 

A silence. Then 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. My father was silently apologizing to Lee: My daughter is a moody, sensitive girl prone to bursts of emotion, and something about these old stories puts her in a sour mood. She's in her last year of high school but still a child. Still childish. I'd better get her home.

 

"The university students your father helps are the lucky ones now." Lee's eyes fell on me, and I forced a smile to my lips. I nodded, pretending to agree. But the way he spoke about my father in the old days gave me the creeps. I couldn't imagine Baba like that at all-someone the girls swooned for? Who was that person?

 

 

The job in Taiwan was only supposed to be for one year. And sure, there'd been emails, and phone calls when the hours aligned. But why hadn't he come home to visit?

 

He left the summer after my freshman year. Before that, Baba had been out of work for I didn't know how long; at some point when I was still in junior high, he'd been laid off from his job at Boeing out in Long Beach. Mah was selling houses, out every weekend at showings, wooing clients over dim sum, managing contractors in every suburb in LA County where Chinese-speaking families lived: Alhambra, West Covina, Torrance, Cerritos. All I remember Baba doing during that time? He stayed in bed and read comic books. He'd dug them out of a cardboard box in the garage. Sometimes I sat next to him with my own reading, a novel assigned for English class, or an issue of Sassy borrowed from Fiona, my best friend. The pillow smelled like Mah's face cream, even though she'd started sleeping in the guest room. "Because Baba snores," she'd complained.

 

Weekdays, he didn't get dressed or ever leave the house. No more badminton at the park on Saturday afternoons with the other church dads, and he stopped accompanying Mah to Sunday service at First Chinese Calvary over on South Street. He wasn't acting like a normal father anymore. I was in the ninth grade and embarrassed about everything, including this.

 

One Sunday afternoon, the church dads showed up unannounced. They dragged Baba out of bed and forced him into the shower, chanting, "Jesus loves you! He will provide! Praise Him!" Crowded outside the bathroom door, they sang a rousing hymnal while Baba cleaned up, their voices ringing through the house. They came the Sunday after that, and again on the third Sunday. They wanted Baba to get back to himself, and this was how they thought they could help, with earnest harmonizing, shouts of Hallelujah, wreathing my father in God's holy spirit.

 

It didn't work. After they left each week, Baba crawled back into bed, surrounded by his comic books. There were volumes stacked on the nightstand, a few tossed on the ground. One time, I flipped through a copy. All those hours of Chinese school homework, that dreaded calligraphy notebook with pages of black grids, and I could only understand about half the text in the comics. The illustrations filled in the rest. A teenage boy wakes up on a Taiwanese fishing boat with amnesia; he'd survived the typhoon but remembers nothing about his past.

 

What finally helped, I guess, was finding another job. He and Mah told me together in July that year: Baba was moving to Taiwan for a position at his alma mater, working to secure overseas internships for their engineering grads. I can't remember who packed the suitcases or if I rode along in the car to LAX. Just that one day he was gone, like nothing.

 

Sophomore year, I picked up smoking menthols from Fiona. I turned sixteen. Failed my driving test a bunch of times before I gave up. Baba didn't come home that summer like he'd said he would. Mah explained that he'd signed on for another academic year. I asked if they were getting a divorce. "We need his salary for your college," she said. "Don't be ridiculous."

 

As if to make up for his absence at church, Mah threw herself into her devotionals even more vigorously than before. She hosted Friday night Bible study at our house once a month. Not long after Baba left, she bought a huge Jesus painting and hung it on the living room wall, above the black leather sofa with the rip in the arm. A crown of thorns rested on His head, and rivulets of blood flowed down His temples. Jesus's soft blue eyes gazed over the furniture-the matching leather love seat to the side, the walnut-and-glass coffee table decorated with a white doily at its center-and landed on the upright Yamaha against the opposite wall, where I took my weekly piano lessons.

 

Junior year, I learned to drink soju and beer with my friends. Another school year passed, and then it was summer again. I was seventeen. I asked Mah if Baba was coming home. Instead of answering, she said she was switching me to a new piano teacher.

 

Ping was a grad student in music composition and performance at CalArts up in Valencia. Mah had heard about her because another girl under Ping's tutelage kept winning first place at piano competitions and junior talent shows all over LA, South Bay, Orange County. Mah wanted Ping to work her magic on me, too.

 

Last August: the first time Ping came over to give me a lesson, I caught a look of horror in her eyes when she saw Mah's huge painting of Jesus. I was caught off guard-He'd been hanging there for so long I sort of forgot about it-but when Ping's eyes met mine, she gave a bighearted, booming laugh. I laughed, too. She looked back at Jesus, then again at me. She wiped tears from the corners of her eyes and shook her head. It was the first time an adult (Ping was twenty-four, she told me later, when I asked) had ever used that secret language with me, telling a joke without words. We sat down at the piano, me at the bench, Ping in the chair beside it. She wore a plain black sweatshirt over green cargo pants, and black ankle socks on her feet. Large, docile eyes set wide apart on her round face gave Ping the appearance of a curious goldfish. When she pushed up her sleeves, I saw that her arms were covered in tattoos. I'd never imagined someone from China like that, the doomed way Mah talked about the Communist mainland: starvation, corruption, pollution.

 

Senior year now. I turned eighteen in March; only sixty-four days until graduation. Two years, seven months, since the last time I saw my father. I had to come here to find him. Nine days together in Taipei, finally. To invite him home.

 

I shifted in my seat, peeling sweaty thighs off the molded plastic chair. Lee's presence irritated me. It was my last night in Taiwan-couldn't Baba and I have spent it alone, just the two of us? There were things I wanted to talk to him about, like when exactly he was planning to return to LA, to Mah, and to me.

 

 

I wondered if Mah had been one of those girls watching my father at the badminton court. Neither of my parents had ever been forthcoming about the early days of their romance. I'd tried to ask about it, but they only ever gave me desultory answers, claiming there'd been nothing extraordinary about their courtship.

 

I asked Lee if he knew my mother back then, too. Before he could answer, Baba's cell phone jingled. "Her ears must be itching," Baba said, flipping the phone open.

 

Lee took out the blue handkerchief again, shaking it in the air a few times before refolding it into a neat rectangle. He turned away from us and blew his nose violently, his eyes squeezed shut.

 

On the phone, Baba repeated my flight info to Mah. He promised to follow Taoyuan regulations and get me there three hours ahead of the scheduled departure time.

 

"What we're doing now?" For an instant, his eyes slid toward Lee. "You want to talk to her?" He handed me the phone.

 

"Hi, Mah." She asked what foods we'd eaten today, and I listed them for her, everything at breakfast, lunch, dinner, the night market. After a pause, she asked if I'd had a good time. I said yes.

 

"You still want to come back, right?" She gave a soft laugh. "Fiona called yesterday for you. I tell her you're not home yet." What time was it in LA? Fifteen hours behind, so it was Friday morning there. My mother must have been getting ready to leave for work.

 

"Did you cancel Ping for this week, too?" I said. My lessons were on Friday afternoons.

 

"Oh!" Mah cried. "I forget. I have to call her-"

 

I promised one last time to get to the airport early, and then we hung up.

 

"Heavens," Lee said. "Don't be late for this, don't forget that-I bet you can't wait to go off to college and get away from all the nagging."

 

He was right, but I didn't want to give him the satisfaction by agreeing.

 

"You look so much like her." Lee's unwavering gaze made me uncomfortable. "It's almost like being back there again, twenty years ago."

 

So he did know my mother, before.

 

"You're going to have to find a new badminton partner, Uncle Lee," I said.

 

"I see," he said. "Of course. You miss him."

LONGLISTED FOR THE STORY PRIZE

A BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK

“Ho's debut work is the perfect modern example of great American fiction. It's a brilliant series of stories about the lives of two Taiwanese American women and their friendship over 20 years as they explore identity, sexuality, heartbreak and family secrets...What a great read! I feel like Fiona and Jane are friends of mine. I cannot wait to see what Ho writes next. Fiona and Jane brings you into the lives of these women in a relatable, authentic way. You will love it.”
—Jake Tapper

“Over the course of the book Fiona and Jane become real and electric and precious people. The stories move through intimate, cinematic scenes. . . . The world Ho creates between the two women feels like one friend reading the other’s story, wishing she were there. . . .  [E]ven to those not from Los Angeles, Ho’s debut collection feels like a shared experience.”
—Tammy Tarng, The New York Times Book Review

Fiona And Jane captures the textures of female friendship and all the intensity, loyalty, and occasional torment of it.”
—Ailsa Chang, NPR’s “All Things Considered”

“An engaging first book. . . . Secrets and betrayals resound through many of the stories. . . . There’s also an endearing sexual boldness in Fiona and Jane. These are Western women who grew up in the Nineties. . . . It’s a vibrant, sexually active world these friendships are acted out in. . . . Emotional accuracy lights up the work. . . . Ho’s writing evokes youthful folly, ever glorious and stupid, with a shadow of later awareness in the prose.”
—Joan Silber, The New York Review of Books

“Jean Chen Ho’s debut collection . . . evokes a distinctive multi-ethnic Asian American experience coming of age in Los Angeles in the late 20th century: R&B mixtapes, Cool Water cologne, red faces drunk on soju. . . . Through shifting perspectives and evocative milieus (from night markets to seedy Korean bars and exclusive clubs), the assemblage comes as close to a primer on modern L.A. Asian American rites of passage as anything in recent memory.”
—Lisa Wong Macabasco, Vogue

“Ho’s strong debut follows two Taiwanese American besties from grade school through their 30s, flipping through decades to highlight key relationships, crises, nights of drinking and sex. Other people, the world and the girls themselves change, but the friendship between beautiful Fiona and sturdy Jane endures.”
People

"This sparkling debut collection navigates the intimate contours of female friendship. . . . Ho's granularity and lush detail—the flavor of taquitos, having tender sex with a lover for the last time—are in part why the stories are irresistible. But it's Ho's wisdom and compassion for her characters that make us yearn to stay in her world after we've reached the last page."
Oprah Daily, "Great Reads You Don't Want to Miss"

Fiona and Jane is a refreshingly honest treatment of long-term friendships — particularly their inexorable ebb and flow. Story by story, the book captures the way friendships negotiate their own boundaries, at times dissolving unexpectedly and at others flourishing into something more, even if just fleetingly.”
—Meena Venkataramanan, The Los Angeles Times

“A confidently nonlinear debut collection that sluices through the interiority of its protagonists without diminishing the passion and powerfully mysterious intimacy of female friendship.”
Vulture, “The Best Books of the Year (So Far)”

“Intricately rendered. . . . Fiona and Jane celebrates a woman’s ability to be late, to show up in their own lives when and where they want to, to change their minds, to be lonely and to be in love, and to be respected regardless.”
—Rosa Boshier, The Washington Post

“Ho renders both women so real that they begin to feel like people you’ve encountered and hung out with. . . . Its precisely the fact that the women’s trials and tribulations feel refreshingly life-sized that makes the book ring so beautifully, sometimes terribly, true.”
—Ilana Masad, NPR.org
 
“In a story told in alternating voices, two Taiwanese American women, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen, navigate identity, sexuality and heartbreak over two decades in this intimate exploration of female friendship.”
USA Today

“[Fiona and Jane] explores the murky layers of female friendship and the meaning of home."
Entertainment Weekly

“The complex depth of female friendship provides endless fodder for Jean Chen Ho in her debut, Fiona and Jane. Centering on nearly two decades of best friendship between the two titular Taiwanese American women, the [book] reads like a love letter to the beauty and intensity of their relationship. Bonded by their shared experience of coming of age in Los Angeles in immigrant families, Fiona and Jane’s friendship is challenged over the years by distance, romantic relationships and betrayal. But throughout it all, they are constants in each other’s lives—reminders for one another of who they once were and all that they can be.”
—Time

“This frank and moving debut by Jean Chen Ho, told in short stories from differing eras and perspectives, follows a pair of Taiwanese American best friends as they navigate grief, ambition, and the changing realities of their friendship.”
Marie Claire

“In Ho’s debut book of fiction, two childhood best friends growing up in Los Angeles fall in and out of love, navigate estranged family members, and deal with casual racism in these linked short stories about friendship over time.”
—Tomi Obaro, Buzzfeed

“Fiona and Jane are best friends, navigating their tumultuous teenage years together, as well as their family histories and all that comes with them. But when Fiona moves across the country, their bond weakens and threatens to break. This [book] about the power of female friendship will give you a gorgeous peek into both women's perspectives on a shared story that has as many facets as they do.”
Good Housekeeping

“Spanning the globe and 20 years of friendship, two Taiwanese-American women grow up, grow apart and grow together in love, secrets, grief and heartbreak.”
Parade

“A beautiful, sometimes heartbreaking story about the lives of two Asian American girls and how they navigate everything from same-sex relationships to parent loss and beyond.”
–Zibby Owens, Katie Couric Media

“Have you had one of those friendships that served you for many, many years but now exists only in the past tense? Fiona and Jane, Taiwanese girls living in Los Angeles, were best friends all throughout childhood, high school, and college. Then [Fiona] moves away, and like so many long friendships, theirs evaporates. Ten years later we meet them just in that tender, terrifying moment of reconnecting.”
Glamour

“Multi-decade friendship books are hard to pull off and Jean Chen Ho’s debut collection Fiona and Jane is a splendid addition to the genre. Expansive and intimate, it traces the titular characters’ coming of age across Taiwan, Southern California, and New York City. Even in the expansive scope of these singular stories, she draws our attention to unseen intimacies both tender and cruel between friends, family, and lovers.”
—Benedict Nguyễn, BOMB

“Virtuosic. . . . A tender portrait of female friendship in all its complexity and depth. . . . Ho’s writing is so vivid, witty and warm that after finishing Fiona and Jane, readers will miss these characters like their own best friends.”
Mike Alberti, The Star Tribune

“Intimate and irreverent. . . . Ho’s stories tackle themes of identity, shame, grief, sexuality and the intensity and complexity of female friendship.”
—Victoria Namkung, NBC Asian American
 
“A fierce debut. . . . We follow Fiona Lin and Jane Shen across time zones and through a whirlwind of settings: a night market in Taipei, a hospital room in New York City, a greasy Korean bar in Garden Grove. Against a backdrop of familial tension and messy romances, Fiona and Jane navigate their burgeoning sexualities, grapple with inherited traumas, and struggle with the aftermath of impulsive decisions. . . . The stories are also saturated with queerness. . . . At the same time, Fiona and Jane doesn’t shy away from the brutal complexities of queer life.”
—Ariel Chu, them.
 
“A wonderful debut. . . . [Fiona and Jane] is a book that is built on memory, a book that speaks to the importance and difficulties and richness of friendship between women over time, a book that braids its form and content together to create meaning.”
—Laura Spence-Ash, Ploughshares

“A tender portrait of female friendship. It’s about two Taiwanese American women, Fiona and Jane – longtime best friends whose relationship is strained when life scatters them to opposite coasts. The story spans decades as they grow together and apart, navigating love, death, complicated families and heartbreak.”
The Washington Post

“Two young Taiwanese women navigate friendship and sexuality in this 20-year narrative. Living in New York and Los Angeles, Fiona and Jane tell alternating stories about what it's like to be Asian in America, the bonds of friendship as girls become women and what loyalty truly means.”
―Zibby Owens, Good Morning America online

“Refreshing and intimate, this debut collection of stories features the underrepresented voices of Taiwanese American best friends, Fiona and Jane, and the evolution of their lives and relationship over 20 years.”
Ms. Magazine

“Spanning nearly thirty years, Jean Chen Ho’s linked story cycle centers on the ever-evolving relationship between two best friends as they weather the hard-partying highs and the lonesome lows of youth, the comforts and frustrations of filial duty, and the often-baffling search for some semblance of stability.”
Electric Literature, “The Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books of 2022”

Fiona and Jane so precisely captures a lot that’s left unsaid in strong female friendships: small resentments that build over time, even outright betrayal. It’s a three-dimensional portrayal of their bond—the good and the bad. There is love here, and refreshing honesty, too. If you are lucky, you have had a friend like this in your life, a friend who you might want to share this book with.” 
—Katie Yee, Lit Hub’s “Most Anticipated Books of 2022”

“A tender, coming-of-age tale that will have you calling up your best friend. . . . An intimate portrait of female friendship — the drama, the strength, the love — while also diving into themes of sexuality, mental health, immigration, secrets, and cultural identity.”
Jordan Snowden, Apartment Therapy

“This [book] captures the ever-so complicated intensity of those female friendships that feel more like soulmates — from teens running though seedy L.A. bars through adult life in California and New York, Fiona and Jen are two women who deal with a lot of s*** that comes with life: opportunistic partners, parent’s sudden death, etc. Their friendship is strained by it all but they always have a home in each other (*sobbing*) in this intimate, raw portrait of friendship.”
Nylon

“Judging by the cover alone, you can tell Fiona and Jane is probably going to be one of the hot girl subway books in 2022."
—W Magazine

“Jean Chen Ho’s Fiona and Jane follows the eponymous Taiwanese American duo over the course of 20 years. After growing up together in California, the two best friends are separated when Fiona lights out for New York — a move that leaves Jane to deal with her father’s untimely death without her BFF by her side.”
Bustle

“While an intimate portrait of friendship, Fiona and Jane also tackles themes around sexuality, social class, immigration, family secrets, mental health, and Asian American identity.”
Fortune

“Chen Ho is a masterful storyteller . . . . 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.”
Susan Blumberg-Kason, Asian Review of Books

Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho chronicles the friendship of two Taiwanese-American women who have been inseparable since second grade. . . . [An] astounding [book] about adult friendships and two remarkable women who aren’t quite sure if they still fit together like they did when they were children.”
PopSugar

“Compelling. . . . Fiona and Jane—both earnest, curious and heart-full—epitomize the realities of growing up in America as young women, as immi­grants, as Asian Americans. Their arcs show how families complicate one’s life while also enriching it, how friends can become a found family, and how every choice can echo in and reflect a per­son’s whole life. By the [book’s] end, readers will feel as though they carry some part of these women with them, as if Fiona and Jane are our friends, as if their stories might yet overlap with our own.”
BookPage (starred review)

“I have long maintained that there aren’t nearly enough books centered on the intricate, fascinating complexities of close female friendship, and I’m so glad to learn that Ho’s novel Fiona and Jane follows a deep friendship between two Taiwanese American women. I must read this book. Publishers, please give us more books about friendship.”
R.O. Kwon, Electric Literature, “61 Books by Women of Color to Read in 2022”

“These linked stories lovingly and unflinchingly explore the complications of familial relationships, shifting notions of home, and how friendship can be both a wound and a balm.” 
—Tiffany Babb, The Observer

“Brutally honest, tender, funny, and . . . with characters that will stay with you long after reading.”
Erica Ezeidedi, Book Riot
 
“With Fiona and Jane, Jean Ho announces herself as a bold and provocative new talent to watch out for. In this sexy and stylish set of stories about friendship, love, loyalty, and betrayal, she fearlessly delves into the intimacies between women and delivers a knockout of a book.”
Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer and The Committed

“Unsentimental, subtly subversive, and always surprising, Jean Chen Ho's beautiful debut Fiona and Jane glides me into revelations about the ambiguities of friendship, queer sexuality, and love. I rarely read portraits of friendships like that of Fiona and Jane, two flawed women who are each other’s constants throughout the crossroad in their lives. Jean Chen Ho is not afraid to give us a funny, unresolved and very real portrait of Asian Americans just getting by in LA and New York. I love this book.”
Cathy Park Hong, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Minor Feelings

"Fiona and Jane is a high wire act of a collection, the stories born of the experiments in daring you feel around the friend you are sure will always be there. Amid the intricate fretwork of adhoc desires, missing family, and rehearsals for adulthood, a cool-handed nerve shapes it all—Jean Chen Ho's brilliant debut is as assured as what must surely follow."
—Alexander Chee, author of National Bestseller The Queen of the Night and How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

"Loving and fierce, sharp and emotionally resonant, Fiona and Jane is not only the story of two best friends as they grow into adulthood—it’s a love letter to Asian American women’s friendship, in all of its most beautiful and heartbreaking iterations."
—Lisa Ko, author of National Book Award finalist The Leavers

"I loved every one of these vibrant, sharply-observed stories that explore the complexities of friendship, love, lust, youth and identity. Jean Chen Ho’s writing is spiky, surprising and funny, suffused with wit and sadness. On top of all that, she writes about southern California with specificity and insight, mapping corners of it that I haven't seen before in fiction. A striking debut from a very talented writer."
—Charles Yu, National Book Award-winning author of Interior Chinatown

"Fiona and Jane is the book I did not know I was waiting to be written—one that brilliantly examines what it feels like to be young and woman and hungry for a meaningful life right now. Via language that is tender, shot through with humor and undergirded with lyricism, Jean Chen Ho has created a universe of mothers, daughters, lovers and, vitally, friends who become sisters. Read this remarkable work of fiction and feel the world open up around you."
—Angela Flournoy, author of National Book Award finalist The Turner House

"Jean Chen Ho has created an iconic pair of friends who are messy and sexy and so thoroughly alive that I'm pretty sure we once snuck into a club together. Joyously specific and true, Fiona and Jane is my new favorite book."
—Jade Chang, author of The Wangs vs. the World

"In Fiona and Jane, Jean Chen Ho charts the emotional journey of young women brought together or torn apart by families, friends, or lovers. She writes with great beauty and sensitivity about moments in life when the unsaid or unsayable can no longer be held back and the truth gushes forth in all its rawness. This book is a treasure."
—Laila Lalami, author of National Book Award finalist The Other Americans

“[Fiona and Jane is] full of life cracking open in every line. It is life, describing the constantly healing wound of being a woman, alive and growing and failing and thriving in the world.”
—Aja Gabel, The Millions

“If you're looking for a book about female friendship, look no further than Jean Chen Ho's Fiona and Jane, which details the complex relationship between two Taiwanese American women over the course of 20 years.”
Marie Claire

“A brilliant examination into young life and told in a brilliant fashion. Jean Chen Ho has created two of the most memorable characters in recent fiction.”
Debutiful

“Wondrous. . . .  I loved how the stories were told from alternating perspectives and how we got a fuller portrait of both women through each new tale.”
—Alma

“Told in each of their voices, this debut centers on the intensity, resentment and love of female friendships.”
Sarah Stiefvater, PureWow

“In this tender and timeless debut, Chen Ho explores the intimate facets of female friendship, Asian American immigrant experiences in Los Angeles and New York, and the debilitating power of family traumas.”
—Booklist
 
“Intimate. . . . Ho excels at creating characters whose struggles feel deeply human. This packs in plenty of insights about love and friendship.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Who knows you better: you or your best friend? . . . Ho’s adept captures of childhood confusion, teenage angst, and adult malaise lend the stories a universality that is not undermined by her equally precise dissections of racial and sexual issues facing Fiona and Jane. The misogynistic dangers facing the girls as they stretch their high school wings in the gorgeous and nerve-wracking story ‘Go Slow’ echo throughout the work as a whole, with a particularly resounding tone in the devastating precis, ‘Korean Boys I’ve Loved.’ Readers will wish for a Fiona or Jane in their own lives.”
Kirkus Reviews
© Julian Sambrano Jr.
Jean Chen Ho is a doctoral candidate in creative writing and literature at the University of Southern California, where she is a Dornsife Fellow in fiction. She has an MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and her writing has been published in The Georgia Review, GQ, Harper's BazaarGuernicaThe RumpusApogeeMcSweeney's Internet Tendency, and others. She was born in Taiwan, grew up in Southern California, and lives in Los Angeles. View titles by Jean Chen Ho
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About

A TIME, NPR, VOGUE, OPRAH DAILY, AND VULTURE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (SO FAR)

One of TIME’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2022

“Ho's debut work is the perfect modern example of great American fiction. . . . You will love it.” —Jake Tapper

“Intimate, cinematic. . . . The world Ho creates between the two women feels like one friend reading the other’s story, wishing she were there.”
The New York Times Book Review

“[Fiona and Jane] is about an incredible lifelong friendship between two Asian American women growing up in Southern California—absolutely adored that book.” —Ailsa Chang, NPR’s “All Things Considered”

“Intricately rendered. . . . Fiona and Jane celebrates a woman’s ability to be late, to show up in their own lives when and where they want to, to change their minds, to be lonely and to be in love, and to be respected regardless.” —The Washington Post

A witty, warm, and irreverent book that traces the lives of two young Taiwanese American women as they navigate friendship, sexuality, identity, and heartbreak over two decades.


Best friends since second grade, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen explore the lonely freeways and seedy bars of Los Angeles together through their teenage years, surviving unfulfilling romantic encounters, and carrying with them the scars of their families' tumultuous pasts. Fiona was always destined to leave, her effortless beauty burnished by fierce ambition—qualities that Jane admired and feared in equal measure. When Fiona moves to New York and cares for a sick friend through a breakup with an opportunistic boyfriend, Jane remains in California and grieves her estranged father's sudden death, in the process alienating an overzealous girlfriend. Strained by distance and unintended betrayals, the women float in and out of each other's lives, their friendship both a beacon of home and a reminder of all they've lost.

In stories told in alternating voices, Jean Chen Ho's debut collection peels back the layers of female friendship—the intensity, resentment, and boundless love—to probe the beating hearts of young women coming to terms with themselves, and each other, in light of the insecurities and shame that holds them back.

Spanning countries and selves, Fiona and Jane is an intimate portrait of a friendship, a deep dive into the universal perplexities of being young and alive, and a bracingly honest account of two Asian women who dare to stake a claim on joy in a changing, contemporary America.

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY VOGUE * USA TODAY * TIME * OPRAH DAILY * PARADE * THE WASHINGTON POST * BUZZFEED * GOOD HOUSEKEEPING * MARIE CLAIRE * FORTUNE * GLAMOUR * W MAGAZINE * NYLON * BUSTLE * POPSUGAR * ELECTRIC LITERATURE * THE RUMPUS * DEBUTIFUL * AND MORE!

Excerpt

The Night Market

 

My last evening in Taiwan, my father wanted to show me Shilin Night Market. We rode the subway, transferring at Taipei Main Station for the northbound red line. Saturday night, the market was jammed with people strolling up and down the arteries of the main thoroughfare. Baba and I dragged along with the crowd, pausing here and there to browse the wares. We'd made up from the fight in the car driving down Yangmingshan yesterday, at least for now. He'd promised to rethink the new university contract and seriously consider coming back to the States for good.

 

The air was saturated by the scent of grilled meat, custard pudding and red bean pies, propane fumes and human sweat. Deep house music pumped out of every other storefront speaker, as vendors shouted into megaphones pointed at the passing hordes: Two-for-one ladies cotton underwear! Genuine leather sandals for men! Motorola flip phones unlocked here! DVDs! CDs! Come take a look!

 

At the food section in the back of the market, Baba stood in line to order us bowls of oyster vermicelli while I staked out seats at the communal tables set up in the center of the stalls. We dipped into the noodles. The oysters floated on top, fat and glistening like polished jewels.

 

"Listen, mei. There's one more person who wanted to see you before you leave," Baba said, between bites.

 

I asked if it was another relative. If Baba sensed my irritation, he didn't show it.

 

Before this trip, I hadn't seen my father in two and a half years, since he took this job. In the last week-my spring break-I'd barely spent any time with him alone. Every day, another banquet dinner with dozens of cousins, uncles and aunties, family friends who asked if I remembered them from the last time I visited the island, when I was just a kid.

 

"You can call him Uncle Lee," he said. One of his college buddies, my father explained. For a second, he looked like he had more to add. "He's been a good friend to me," he said finally.

 

"That's him over there now." Baba lifted a hand and waved.

 

The man waved back and made his way to our table. He moved with the compressed energy of a wrestler, his chin slightly down, arms swinging deliberately, as if ready to grapple at a moment's notice. Lee wore a red tank top with a cartoon duck printed on the chest, the hem tucked into a pair of tight black jeans, an FOB outfit that would've caught stares back home, but here he looked cool, I thought.

 

"My baby daughter," Baba said.

 

"Uncle Lee," I said in Mandarin. "Pleased to meet you."

 

"Sit down, sit down!" He offered his hand to me, and I shook it. "A big lady, tall like Old Shen here."

 

"She takes after her mother more than me-"

 

"I should hope so, with your teeth," said Lee, and they both laughed. He extracted a blue handkerchief from the nylon fanny pack around his waist and wiped down his face, which gleamed with sweat. "Much hotter here than LA, right? And it's only March." He gestured toward the empty Styrofoam bowls on the table. "You like Taiwanese food? Even the broiled intestines in the vermicelli?"

 

"My daughter eats very well."

 

"Wah! Like you, then." Lee jabbed a finger into my father's side.

 

"Uncle Lee, have you eaten yet?"

 

Lee smiled. "She's quite mature. Good manners." He glanced at my father approvingly. "All foreign-born girls not this way. Sometimes you hear stories about overseas children."

 

I felt my cheeks warm under Lee's scrutiny.

 

"And your Mandarin isn't bad," he said. "I thought your father was exaggerating, going on about 'My daughter Jane doing this and that, memorized the periodic table when she was only twelve, super number one classical piano.'"

 

"My mother stuck me in Saturday Chinese school for years," I said. "Baba bribed me with McDonald's."

 

"Lee and I used to compete in the university badminton courts," Baba said. I was glad for the subject change. "When I moved back here, I went looking for a game at those same courts, and I saw him there, believe it or not."

 

"In our college days, the girls crowded the bleachers," Lee said. "Just to catch a glimpse of your father in those white athletic shorts."

 

"Lee! Don't make up stories."

 

"Sometimes he even played bare chest," Lee said, grinning. He pantomimed pulling off his shirt with a flourish of his arms. "Quite a scene you created, brother."

 

"You, Baba?"

 

"Not me," he replied. "You must be remembering someone else, Lee."

 

"Don't be so modest," said Lee. "Your father was the school prince."

 

Baba shook his head.

 

"We all knew he'd be the one to go to America."

 

"I was lucky, that's all," said my father.

 

"Luck!" Lee exclaimed. "You're brilliant. You worked hard-"

 

"I made certain choices," Baba said. "Left or right-"

 

"Like deciding to move back here," I said, with more force than I intended. "And stay here," I added. "Or was that luck?"

 

A silence. Then 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. My father was silently apologizing to Lee: My daughter is a moody, sensitive girl prone to bursts of emotion, and something about these old stories puts her in a sour mood. She's in her last year of high school but still a child. Still childish. I'd better get her home.

 

"The university students your father helps are the lucky ones now." Lee's eyes fell on me, and I forced a smile to my lips. I nodded, pretending to agree. But the way he spoke about my father in the old days gave me the creeps. I couldn't imagine Baba like that at all-someone the girls swooned for? Who was that person?

 

 

The job in Taiwan was only supposed to be for one year. And sure, there'd been emails, and phone calls when the hours aligned. But why hadn't he come home to visit?

 

He left the summer after my freshman year. Before that, Baba had been out of work for I didn't know how long; at some point when I was still in junior high, he'd been laid off from his job at Boeing out in Long Beach. Mah was selling houses, out every weekend at showings, wooing clients over dim sum, managing contractors in every suburb in LA County where Chinese-speaking families lived: Alhambra, West Covina, Torrance, Cerritos. All I remember Baba doing during that time? He stayed in bed and read comic books. He'd dug them out of a cardboard box in the garage. Sometimes I sat next to him with my own reading, a novel assigned for English class, or an issue of Sassy borrowed from Fiona, my best friend. The pillow smelled like Mah's face cream, even though she'd started sleeping in the guest room. "Because Baba snores," she'd complained.

 

Weekdays, he didn't get dressed or ever leave the house. No more badminton at the park on Saturday afternoons with the other church dads, and he stopped accompanying Mah to Sunday service at First Chinese Calvary over on South Street. He wasn't acting like a normal father anymore. I was in the ninth grade and embarrassed about everything, including this.

 

One Sunday afternoon, the church dads showed up unannounced. They dragged Baba out of bed and forced him into the shower, chanting, "Jesus loves you! He will provide! Praise Him!" Crowded outside the bathroom door, they sang a rousing hymnal while Baba cleaned up, their voices ringing through the house. They came the Sunday after that, and again on the third Sunday. They wanted Baba to get back to himself, and this was how they thought they could help, with earnest harmonizing, shouts of Hallelujah, wreathing my father in God's holy spirit.

 

It didn't work. After they left each week, Baba crawled back into bed, surrounded by his comic books. There were volumes stacked on the nightstand, a few tossed on the ground. One time, I flipped through a copy. All those hours of Chinese school homework, that dreaded calligraphy notebook with pages of black grids, and I could only understand about half the text in the comics. The illustrations filled in the rest. A teenage boy wakes up on a Taiwanese fishing boat with amnesia; he'd survived the typhoon but remembers nothing about his past.

 

What finally helped, I guess, was finding another job. He and Mah told me together in July that year: Baba was moving to Taiwan for a position at his alma mater, working to secure overseas internships for their engineering grads. I can't remember who packed the suitcases or if I rode along in the car to LAX. Just that one day he was gone, like nothing.

 

Sophomore year, I picked up smoking menthols from Fiona. I turned sixteen. Failed my driving test a bunch of times before I gave up. Baba didn't come home that summer like he'd said he would. Mah explained that he'd signed on for another academic year. I asked if they were getting a divorce. "We need his salary for your college," she said. "Don't be ridiculous."

 

As if to make up for his absence at church, Mah threw herself into her devotionals even more vigorously than before. She hosted Friday night Bible study at our house once a month. Not long after Baba left, she bought a huge Jesus painting and hung it on the living room wall, above the black leather sofa with the rip in the arm. A crown of thorns rested on His head, and rivulets of blood flowed down His temples. Jesus's soft blue eyes gazed over the furniture-the matching leather love seat to the side, the walnut-and-glass coffee table decorated with a white doily at its center-and landed on the upright Yamaha against the opposite wall, where I took my weekly piano lessons.

 

Junior year, I learned to drink soju and beer with my friends. Another school year passed, and then it was summer again. I was seventeen. I asked Mah if Baba was coming home. Instead of answering, she said she was switching me to a new piano teacher.

 

Ping was a grad student in music composition and performance at CalArts up in Valencia. Mah had heard about her because another girl under Ping's tutelage kept winning first place at piano competitions and junior talent shows all over LA, South Bay, Orange County. Mah wanted Ping to work her magic on me, too.

 

Last August: the first time Ping came over to give me a lesson, I caught a look of horror in her eyes when she saw Mah's huge painting of Jesus. I was caught off guard-He'd been hanging there for so long I sort of forgot about it-but when Ping's eyes met mine, she gave a bighearted, booming laugh. I laughed, too. She looked back at Jesus, then again at me. She wiped tears from the corners of her eyes and shook her head. It was the first time an adult (Ping was twenty-four, she told me later, when I asked) had ever used that secret language with me, telling a joke without words. We sat down at the piano, me at the bench, Ping in the chair beside it. She wore a plain black sweatshirt over green cargo pants, and black ankle socks on her feet. Large, docile eyes set wide apart on her round face gave Ping the appearance of a curious goldfish. When she pushed up her sleeves, I saw that her arms were covered in tattoos. I'd never imagined someone from China like that, the doomed way Mah talked about the Communist mainland: starvation, corruption, pollution.

 

Senior year now. I turned eighteen in March; only sixty-four days until graduation. Two years, seven months, since the last time I saw my father. I had to come here to find him. Nine days together in Taipei, finally. To invite him home.

 

I shifted in my seat, peeling sweaty thighs off the molded plastic chair. Lee's presence irritated me. It was my last night in Taiwan-couldn't Baba and I have spent it alone, just the two of us? There were things I wanted to talk to him about, like when exactly he was planning to return to LA, to Mah, and to me.

 

 

I wondered if Mah had been one of those girls watching my father at the badminton court. Neither of my parents had ever been forthcoming about the early days of their romance. I'd tried to ask about it, but they only ever gave me desultory answers, claiming there'd been nothing extraordinary about their courtship.

 

I asked Lee if he knew my mother back then, too. Before he could answer, Baba's cell phone jingled. "Her ears must be itching," Baba said, flipping the phone open.

 

Lee took out the blue handkerchief again, shaking it in the air a few times before refolding it into a neat rectangle. He turned away from us and blew his nose violently, his eyes squeezed shut.

 

On the phone, Baba repeated my flight info to Mah. He promised to follow Taoyuan regulations and get me there three hours ahead of the scheduled departure time.

 

"What we're doing now?" For an instant, his eyes slid toward Lee. "You want to talk to her?" He handed me the phone.

 

"Hi, Mah." She asked what foods we'd eaten today, and I listed them for her, everything at breakfast, lunch, dinner, the night market. After a pause, she asked if I'd had a good time. I said yes.

 

"You still want to come back, right?" She gave a soft laugh. "Fiona called yesterday for you. I tell her you're not home yet." What time was it in LA? Fifteen hours behind, so it was Friday morning there. My mother must have been getting ready to leave for work.

 

"Did you cancel Ping for this week, too?" I said. My lessons were on Friday afternoons.

 

"Oh!" Mah cried. "I forget. I have to call her-"

 

I promised one last time to get to the airport early, and then we hung up.

 

"Heavens," Lee said. "Don't be late for this, don't forget that-I bet you can't wait to go off to college and get away from all the nagging."

 

He was right, but I didn't want to give him the satisfaction by agreeing.

 

"You look so much like her." Lee's unwavering gaze made me uncomfortable. "It's almost like being back there again, twenty years ago."

 

So he did know my mother, before.

 

"You're going to have to find a new badminton partner, Uncle Lee," I said.

 

"I see," he said. "Of course. You miss him."

Praise

LONGLISTED FOR THE STORY PRIZE

A BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK

“Ho's debut work is the perfect modern example of great American fiction. It's a brilliant series of stories about the lives of two Taiwanese American women and their friendship over 20 years as they explore identity, sexuality, heartbreak and family secrets...What a great read! I feel like Fiona and Jane are friends of mine. I cannot wait to see what Ho writes next. Fiona and Jane brings you into the lives of these women in a relatable, authentic way. You will love it.”
—Jake Tapper

“Over the course of the book Fiona and Jane become real and electric and precious people. The stories move through intimate, cinematic scenes. . . . The world Ho creates between the two women feels like one friend reading the other’s story, wishing she were there. . . .  [E]ven to those not from Los Angeles, Ho’s debut collection feels like a shared experience.”
—Tammy Tarng, The New York Times Book Review

Fiona And Jane captures the textures of female friendship and all the intensity, loyalty, and occasional torment of it.”
—Ailsa Chang, NPR’s “All Things Considered”

“An engaging first book. . . . Secrets and betrayals resound through many of the stories. . . . There’s also an endearing sexual boldness in Fiona and Jane. These are Western women who grew up in the Nineties. . . . It’s a vibrant, sexually active world these friendships are acted out in. . . . Emotional accuracy lights up the work. . . . Ho’s writing evokes youthful folly, ever glorious and stupid, with a shadow of later awareness in the prose.”
—Joan Silber, The New York Review of Books

“Jean Chen Ho’s debut collection . . . evokes a distinctive multi-ethnic Asian American experience coming of age in Los Angeles in the late 20th century: R&B mixtapes, Cool Water cologne, red faces drunk on soju. . . . Through shifting perspectives and evocative milieus (from night markets to seedy Korean bars and exclusive clubs), the assemblage comes as close to a primer on modern L.A. Asian American rites of passage as anything in recent memory.”
—Lisa Wong Macabasco, Vogue

“Ho’s strong debut follows two Taiwanese American besties from grade school through their 30s, flipping through decades to highlight key relationships, crises, nights of drinking and sex. Other people, the world and the girls themselves change, but the friendship between beautiful Fiona and sturdy Jane endures.”
People

"This sparkling debut collection navigates the intimate contours of female friendship. . . . Ho's granularity and lush detail—the flavor of taquitos, having tender sex with a lover for the last time—are in part why the stories are irresistible. But it's Ho's wisdom and compassion for her characters that make us yearn to stay in her world after we've reached the last page."
Oprah Daily, "Great Reads You Don't Want to Miss"

Fiona and Jane is a refreshingly honest treatment of long-term friendships — particularly their inexorable ebb and flow. Story by story, the book captures the way friendships negotiate their own boundaries, at times dissolving unexpectedly and at others flourishing into something more, even if just fleetingly.”
—Meena Venkataramanan, The Los Angeles Times

“A confidently nonlinear debut collection that sluices through the interiority of its protagonists without diminishing the passion and powerfully mysterious intimacy of female friendship.”
Vulture, “The Best Books of the Year (So Far)”

“Intricately rendered. . . . Fiona and Jane celebrates a woman’s ability to be late, to show up in their own lives when and where they want to, to change their minds, to be lonely and to be in love, and to be respected regardless.”
—Rosa Boshier, The Washington Post

“Ho renders both women so real that they begin to feel like people you’ve encountered and hung out with. . . . Its precisely the fact that the women’s trials and tribulations feel refreshingly life-sized that makes the book ring so beautifully, sometimes terribly, true.”
—Ilana Masad, NPR.org
 
“In a story told in alternating voices, two Taiwanese American women, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen, navigate identity, sexuality and heartbreak over two decades in this intimate exploration of female friendship.”
USA Today

“[Fiona and Jane] explores the murky layers of female friendship and the meaning of home."
Entertainment Weekly

“The complex depth of female friendship provides endless fodder for Jean Chen Ho in her debut, Fiona and Jane. Centering on nearly two decades of best friendship between the two titular Taiwanese American women, the [book] reads like a love letter to the beauty and intensity of their relationship. Bonded by their shared experience of coming of age in Los Angeles in immigrant families, Fiona and Jane’s friendship is challenged over the years by distance, romantic relationships and betrayal. But throughout it all, they are constants in each other’s lives—reminders for one another of who they once were and all that they can be.”
—Time

“This frank and moving debut by Jean Chen Ho, told in short stories from differing eras and perspectives, follows a pair of Taiwanese American best friends as they navigate grief, ambition, and the changing realities of their friendship.”
Marie Claire

“In Ho’s debut book of fiction, two childhood best friends growing up in Los Angeles fall in and out of love, navigate estranged family members, and deal with casual racism in these linked short stories about friendship over time.”
—Tomi Obaro, Buzzfeed

“Fiona and Jane are best friends, navigating their tumultuous teenage years together, as well as their family histories and all that comes with them. But when Fiona moves across the country, their bond weakens and threatens to break. This [book] about the power of female friendship will give you a gorgeous peek into both women's perspectives on a shared story that has as many facets as they do.”
Good Housekeeping

“Spanning the globe and 20 years of friendship, two Taiwanese-American women grow up, grow apart and grow together in love, secrets, grief and heartbreak.”
Parade

“A beautiful, sometimes heartbreaking story about the lives of two Asian American girls and how they navigate everything from same-sex relationships to parent loss and beyond.”
–Zibby Owens, Katie Couric Media

“Have you had one of those friendships that served you for many, many years but now exists only in the past tense? Fiona and Jane, Taiwanese girls living in Los Angeles, were best friends all throughout childhood, high school, and college. Then [Fiona] moves away, and like so many long friendships, theirs evaporates. Ten years later we meet them just in that tender, terrifying moment of reconnecting.”
Glamour

“Multi-decade friendship books are hard to pull off and Jean Chen Ho’s debut collection Fiona and Jane is a splendid addition to the genre. Expansive and intimate, it traces the titular characters’ coming of age across Taiwan, Southern California, and New York City. Even in the expansive scope of these singular stories, she draws our attention to unseen intimacies both tender and cruel between friends, family, and lovers.”
—Benedict Nguyễn, BOMB

“Virtuosic. . . . A tender portrait of female friendship in all its complexity and depth. . . . Ho’s writing is so vivid, witty and warm that after finishing Fiona and Jane, readers will miss these characters like their own best friends.”
Mike Alberti, The Star Tribune

“Intimate and irreverent. . . . Ho’s stories tackle themes of identity, shame, grief, sexuality and the intensity and complexity of female friendship.”
—Victoria Namkung, NBC Asian American
 
“A fierce debut. . . . We follow Fiona Lin and Jane Shen across time zones and through a whirlwind of settings: a night market in Taipei, a hospital room in New York City, a greasy Korean bar in Garden Grove. Against a backdrop of familial tension and messy romances, Fiona and Jane navigate their burgeoning sexualities, grapple with inherited traumas, and struggle with the aftermath of impulsive decisions. . . . The stories are also saturated with queerness. . . . At the same time, Fiona and Jane doesn’t shy away from the brutal complexities of queer life.”
—Ariel Chu, them.
 
“A wonderful debut. . . . [Fiona and Jane] is a book that is built on memory, a book that speaks to the importance and difficulties and richness of friendship between women over time, a book that braids its form and content together to create meaning.”
—Laura Spence-Ash, Ploughshares

“A tender portrait of female friendship. It’s about two Taiwanese American women, Fiona and Jane – longtime best friends whose relationship is strained when life scatters them to opposite coasts. The story spans decades as they grow together and apart, navigating love, death, complicated families and heartbreak.”
The Washington Post

“Two young Taiwanese women navigate friendship and sexuality in this 20-year narrative. Living in New York and Los Angeles, Fiona and Jane tell alternating stories about what it's like to be Asian in America, the bonds of friendship as girls become women and what loyalty truly means.”
―Zibby Owens, Good Morning America online

“Refreshing and intimate, this debut collection of stories features the underrepresented voices of Taiwanese American best friends, Fiona and Jane, and the evolution of their lives and relationship over 20 years.”
Ms. Magazine

“Spanning nearly thirty years, Jean Chen Ho’s linked story cycle centers on the ever-evolving relationship between two best friends as they weather the hard-partying highs and the lonesome lows of youth, the comforts and frustrations of filial duty, and the often-baffling search for some semblance of stability.”
Electric Literature, “The Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books of 2022”

Fiona and Jane so precisely captures a lot that’s left unsaid in strong female friendships: small resentments that build over time, even outright betrayal. It’s a three-dimensional portrayal of their bond—the good and the bad. There is love here, and refreshing honesty, too. If you are lucky, you have had a friend like this in your life, a friend who you might want to share this book with.” 
—Katie Yee, Lit Hub’s “Most Anticipated Books of 2022”

“A tender, coming-of-age tale that will have you calling up your best friend. . . . An intimate portrait of female friendship — the drama, the strength, the love — while also diving into themes of sexuality, mental health, immigration, secrets, and cultural identity.”
Jordan Snowden, Apartment Therapy

“This [book] captures the ever-so complicated intensity of those female friendships that feel more like soulmates — from teens running though seedy L.A. bars through adult life in California and New York, Fiona and Jen are two women who deal with a lot of s*** that comes with life: opportunistic partners, parent’s sudden death, etc. Their friendship is strained by it all but they always have a home in each other (*sobbing*) in this intimate, raw portrait of friendship.”
Nylon

“Judging by the cover alone, you can tell Fiona and Jane is probably going to be one of the hot girl subway books in 2022."
—W Magazine

“Jean Chen Ho’s Fiona and Jane follows the eponymous Taiwanese American duo over the course of 20 years. After growing up together in California, the two best friends are separated when Fiona lights out for New York — a move that leaves Jane to deal with her father’s untimely death without her BFF by her side.”
Bustle

“While an intimate portrait of friendship, Fiona and Jane also tackles themes around sexuality, social class, immigration, family secrets, mental health, and Asian American identity.”
Fortune

“Chen Ho is a masterful storyteller . . . . 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.”
Susan Blumberg-Kason, Asian Review of Books

Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho chronicles the friendship of two Taiwanese-American women who have been inseparable since second grade. . . . [An] astounding [book] about adult friendships and two remarkable women who aren’t quite sure if they still fit together like they did when they were children.”
PopSugar

“Compelling. . . . Fiona and Jane—both earnest, curious and heart-full—epitomize the realities of growing up in America as young women, as immi­grants, as Asian Americans. Their arcs show how families complicate one’s life while also enriching it, how friends can become a found family, and how every choice can echo in and reflect a per­son’s whole life. By the [book’s] end, readers will feel as though they carry some part of these women with them, as if Fiona and Jane are our friends, as if their stories might yet overlap with our own.”
BookPage (starred review)

“I have long maintained that there aren’t nearly enough books centered on the intricate, fascinating complexities of close female friendship, and I’m so glad to learn that Ho’s novel Fiona and Jane follows a deep friendship between two Taiwanese American women. I must read this book. Publishers, please give us more books about friendship.”
R.O. Kwon, Electric Literature, “61 Books by Women of Color to Read in 2022”

“These linked stories lovingly and unflinchingly explore the complications of familial relationships, shifting notions of home, and how friendship can be both a wound and a balm.” 
—Tiffany Babb, The Observer

“Brutally honest, tender, funny, and . . . with characters that will stay with you long after reading.”
Erica Ezeidedi, Book Riot
 
“With Fiona and Jane, Jean Ho announces herself as a bold and provocative new talent to watch out for. In this sexy and stylish set of stories about friendship, love, loyalty, and betrayal, she fearlessly delves into the intimacies between women and delivers a knockout of a book.”
Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer and The Committed

“Unsentimental, subtly subversive, and always surprising, Jean Chen Ho's beautiful debut Fiona and Jane glides me into revelations about the ambiguities of friendship, queer sexuality, and love. I rarely read portraits of friendships like that of Fiona and Jane, two flawed women who are each other’s constants throughout the crossroad in their lives. Jean Chen Ho is not afraid to give us a funny, unresolved and very real portrait of Asian Americans just getting by in LA and New York. I love this book.”
Cathy Park Hong, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Minor Feelings

"Fiona and Jane is a high wire act of a collection, the stories born of the experiments in daring you feel around the friend you are sure will always be there. Amid the intricate fretwork of adhoc desires, missing family, and rehearsals for adulthood, a cool-handed nerve shapes it all—Jean Chen Ho's brilliant debut is as assured as what must surely follow."
—Alexander Chee, author of National Bestseller The Queen of the Night and How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

"Loving and fierce, sharp and emotionally resonant, Fiona and Jane is not only the story of two best friends as they grow into adulthood—it’s a love letter to Asian American women’s friendship, in all of its most beautiful and heartbreaking iterations."
—Lisa Ko, author of National Book Award finalist The Leavers

"I loved every one of these vibrant, sharply-observed stories that explore the complexities of friendship, love, lust, youth and identity. Jean Chen Ho’s writing is spiky, surprising and funny, suffused with wit and sadness. On top of all that, she writes about southern California with specificity and insight, mapping corners of it that I haven't seen before in fiction. A striking debut from a very talented writer."
—Charles Yu, National Book Award-winning author of Interior Chinatown

"Fiona and Jane is the book I did not know I was waiting to be written—one that brilliantly examines what it feels like to be young and woman and hungry for a meaningful life right now. Via language that is tender, shot through with humor and undergirded with lyricism, Jean Chen Ho has created a universe of mothers, daughters, lovers and, vitally, friends who become sisters. Read this remarkable work of fiction and feel the world open up around you."
—Angela Flournoy, author of National Book Award finalist The Turner House

"Jean Chen Ho has created an iconic pair of friends who are messy and sexy and so thoroughly alive that I'm pretty sure we once snuck into a club together. Joyously specific and true, Fiona and Jane is my new favorite book."
—Jade Chang, author of The Wangs vs. the World

"In Fiona and Jane, Jean Chen Ho charts the emotional journey of young women brought together or torn apart by families, friends, or lovers. She writes with great beauty and sensitivity about moments in life when the unsaid or unsayable can no longer be held back and the truth gushes forth in all its rawness. This book is a treasure."
—Laila Lalami, author of National Book Award finalist The Other Americans

“[Fiona and Jane is] full of life cracking open in every line. It is life, describing the constantly healing wound of being a woman, alive and growing and failing and thriving in the world.”
—Aja Gabel, The Millions

“If you're looking for a book about female friendship, look no further than Jean Chen Ho's Fiona and Jane, which details the complex relationship between two Taiwanese American women over the course of 20 years.”
Marie Claire

“A brilliant examination into young life and told in a brilliant fashion. Jean Chen Ho has created two of the most memorable characters in recent fiction.”
Debutiful

“Wondrous. . . .  I loved how the stories were told from alternating perspectives and how we got a fuller portrait of both women through each new tale.”
—Alma

“Told in each of their voices, this debut centers on the intensity, resentment and love of female friendships.”
Sarah Stiefvater, PureWow

“In this tender and timeless debut, Chen Ho explores the intimate facets of female friendship, Asian American immigrant experiences in Los Angeles and New York, and the debilitating power of family traumas.”
—Booklist
 
“Intimate. . . . Ho excels at creating characters whose struggles feel deeply human. This packs in plenty of insights about love and friendship.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Who knows you better: you or your best friend? . . . Ho’s adept captures of childhood confusion, teenage angst, and adult malaise lend the stories a universality that is not undermined by her equally precise dissections of racial and sexual issues facing Fiona and Jane. The misogynistic dangers facing the girls as they stretch their high school wings in the gorgeous and nerve-wracking story ‘Go Slow’ echo throughout the work as a whole, with a particularly resounding tone in the devastating precis, ‘Korean Boys I’ve Loved.’ Readers will wish for a Fiona or Jane in their own lives.”
Kirkus Reviews

Author

© Julian Sambrano Jr.
Jean Chen Ho is a doctoral candidate in creative writing and literature at the University of Southern California, where she is a Dornsife Fellow in fiction. She has an MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and her writing has been published in The Georgia Review, GQ, Harper's BazaarGuernicaThe RumpusApogeeMcSweeney's Internet Tendency, and others. She was born in Taiwan, grew up in Southern California, and lives in Los Angeles. View titles by Jean Chen Ho

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•     Egypt
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Ring in the New Year by Taking a Look at Our Newest Releases!

Happy New Year! We are officially a week into the new year, which usually means new goals, new planners, and most importantly… new books! Take a look at our first round of newest releases in 2023 (and maybe spend a little bit of that leftover holiday money while you’re at it). ADULT FICTION: ADULT NON

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