I Want Candy
More than anything, 14-year-old Candace Ong wants not to be stuck as a waitress in a restaurant like Eggroll Wonderland; that&#x2019;s the one in San Francisco&#x2019;s Chinatown where her joyless parents work, night and day, and embarrass their daughter with their fractured English. She is also getting extremely tired of playing the role of smart&#x2014;but pudgy&#x2014;sidekick to her best friend, the beautiful and very sexy Ruby Ping. But playing a new part isn&#x2019;t always easy, and Candace makes some often funny, sometimes sad mistakes, most of them of a sexual, vaguely Lolitaesque nature. As she did in her first two novels, The Dim Sum of All Things (2004) and Buddha Baby (2005), Keltner explores the rigors of finding one&#x2019;s identity as a member of two cultures. Her introduction of magical realism into the latter part of her book is a bit disconcerting to the reader but helpful to Candace in discovering important aspects of her Chinese heritage. --Michael Cart