Wild Kids: Two Novels about Growing Up

Can Taiwan's teen angst grab American readers? Let's hope so: Chang writes accessible, knowing and very funny fiction about youth and screwed-up families--some of the best of its kind. A literary superstar and major bestseller in Taiwan, Chang is treated there (as translator Berry's introduction explains) like a big-time movie star. His first publication in English consists of My Kid Sister (1993) and Wild Child (1996), both narrated by the witty, appealing, former Taipei delinquent Big Head Spring. In My Kid Sister, Big Head weaves together stories about his adolescence and its cast of supporting characters: comically quarrelsome grandparents, an unstable mother, a dominating father, a first girlfriend, a couple of difficult schoolmates and above all a defiant sister, whose escapades ""help her learn just how very crazy and unfair this world is."" Among the topics Chang addresses are Chinese legends, wet dreams, music lessons, divorce, Taiwanese politics, middle-school quarrels, pregnancy, ""the secret method of how to make your penis larger,"" amateur videography, death and mourning, and ""how terrifying an ability storytelling can be."" His wry nuances should attract fans of J.D. Salinger; the faux-na f ironies, well-concealed literariness and occasional metafictional touches could remind older readers of Grace Paley. Younger fans will simply enjoy the voice: at the climax of one tale, Big Head complains to himself, ""Your dad is having an affair, except for playing her violin your sister doesn't understand shit, and your mother is insane."" Wild Child's terse, understated chapters chronicle young Big Head's involvement with a gang, whose violent, scarred but loyal members form a kind of surrogate family: the later novel seems less fresh in English, far more tied to its Taipei milieu. My Kid Sister, on the other hand, could be America's next teen classic. (Sept.)