Trailer Tuesday: Girl in Translation

Jean Kwok‘s novel Girl in Translation came out a couple weeks ago, and we highlighted it in our spring debuts blog post, as well as in the May edition of BookPage.

In her review, Becky Ohlsen described it as “no ordinary coming-of-age novel. Or rather, it is ordinary, in the sense of being universal, even though the story’s primary setting will strike most readers as exotic and unfamiliar.”

To learn more about the story, which follows Kimberly Chang through 20 years of her life, watch Kwok describe it in her own words in the book trailer below. Here’s an excerpt: “It’s basically a story about loss of innocence, it’s about overcoming hardships. . . but at its core, it’s a love story.”

If you’re interested in the behind-the-scenes life of an author, Kwok keeps a funny and informative blog. (“And hotels will give you stuff, like bottles of wine and extra flowers and chocolates.  At one hotel, I found a copy of my book. ‘That’s a strange gift,’ I thought, ‘I already have a copy of my book.’”)

Abby, our fiction editor, has expressed a lot of excitement for this novel, and I personally can’t wait to read it. To give you an idea of the buzz it’s already built up, consider this: I’m #9 out of 21 holds at the Nashville Public Library.

Have you read Girl in Translation? Is it worth the hype?