Zen Cho is joining us today to talk about her novel, The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo. Here’s the publisher’s description:
A delicious epistolary romp, brimming with social commentary and rife with wit.
It’s the Roaring Twenties, and writer Jade Yeo is exploring all the passions and perils of London high society. When she writes a scathing review of Bloomsbury luminary Sebastian Hardie, she’s hardly expecting an invitation to his next party, much less to find herself the object of his romantic attentions.
Irresistibly drawn to the prospect of adventure, Jade is intrigued to find that Hardie’s charismatic wife supports his dalliances. But exciting as the Hardies are, a life of fancy dinner parties and bohemian drama is not the freedom Jade has worked for. Forced to confront her real desires, she must decide whether to succumb to the Hardies’ stifling fantasies—or seize real life with the tenacity it demands.
What’s Zen’s favorite bit?
It’s hard to choose a favourite bit of my historical romance novella, The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo. I wrote it around 14 years ago, when I was closer in age to its youthful eponymous protagonist, a Malayan Chinese writer living in 1920s London. Now I’m closer to her mother (described as having attained the “august age of 43”), Jade provokes in me the combination of affection and cringe with which one tends to view one’s younger self.
And yet I’m proud of her: her asides to the reader, her unsubtle anger, her lust for life – and for the sexy, obnoxious Sebastian Hardie, the successful novelist who approaches Jade when she publishes a scathing review of his book. Hardie takes up a disproportionate amount of the blurb: he figures largely in the plot, but not so much in Jade’s emotional life. She’s evasive about what matters to her most, tender about the things that make her swoon or cry.
Most of us are shy about these things, reluctant to reveal them to the world. So I admire works that have their heart on their sleeve – romance novels, kdramas, truly shameless erotic fanfiction – even as I hesitate to let ‘er rip myself. Jade’s story was my first attempt at writing a romance, and arguably I failed, though it’s a love story with the requisite happy ending. Jade herself looms larger in it than any of her amours. It’s about her finding herself, though her love interest is allowed to come along on the journey.
Evasive as Jade can be, she’s direct about many of the things I hesitate to speak openly about. I cringe at writing sex scenes, while she records her experiences as material for her writing. She hasn’t got over colonialism and maybe never will. She’s unashamed about seeing herself as pretty.
The thing that is probably most notable about the novella is Jade’s voice. It was an experiment, at an early point of my writing career. I thought I would try writing as though I didn’t care about being annoying or coming off as twee. It is a voice that will either work for you or not at all – like Marmite or durian, both foodstuffs Jade probably enjoys. As a durian devotee, and lifelong fan of women who are unapologetically themselves, I suppose I’ve got to say Jade’s voice is my favourite bit.
The best fictional narrators keep secrets from you, but they’re just bad enough at it that you always know a little bit more about them than they do. This is a nice feeling for a reader, a wonderful smugness. Let Jade lie to you.
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BIO:
Zen Cho writes fantasy and romance. She is a winner of the Hugo, Crawford and British Fantasy Awards and the LA Times Ray Bradbury Prize, as well as a finalist for the World Fantasy, Ignyte, Lambda, Locus and Astounding Awards. She was born and raised in Malaysia, resides in the UK, and lives in a notional space between the two.
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