When I started reading Girl in Translation, I mistook it for a memoir, and not in a good way. The pacing is slightly off, in a way that feels realistic (time is so subjective!) but also unpolished in fiction.

Young Kimberly is academically gifted and hardworking, a great real-life aspiration, which lacks any narrative tension because I never worried about her. I need to see a character struggle and experience setbacks to really worry about their outcome.  As I read, I wasn’t entirely sure when Kimberly got everything done — private school classes, homework, working in the campus library, meeting with her English tutor, working at night in the sweatshop, and still finding time to neck with boys —  but I didn’t see her experiencing difficulties and learning from them.

Also, I thought the author was protecting the privacy of real people by choosing not to give too many details about the characters, but since it’s a not actually a memoir, they were just flat characters. For example, the character of Annabelle was very significant to the protagonist, and their friendship lasted for years, but Annabelle remains an underdeveloped character without real personality traits or motivations. The teachers were one-note, which is definitely how teenagers experience their teachers, but again, doesn’t really lead to nuance or tension.

Kimberley’s secret sweatshop life should have been dramatic and moving, with workers earning pennies per garment while paying off their debts to the factory owner, but again, I never worried about how Kimberley and her mother would pay for school fees or uniforms. The evil factory owner pointing out the cycle of factory life, with kids and the elderly doing similar simple tasks, was a bit heavy-handed.

Still, I enjoyed the Cantonese phrases and idioms, and especially enjoyed how they were worked into natural conversation.

Finally, I thought the ending was awkward and unbelievable.  Without giving the ending away, it doesn’t match anything I’d learned about Kimberley, her mother or Matt’s character. Plus, that is a massive secret to keep when living in a tight-knit Chinatown community.