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Ava Wong is a protagonist and point-of-view character. She is 37-years-old, with parents who grew up in Hong Kong and immigrated to the US for her father’s career. They lived in Newton, outside of Boston, where Ava got good grades. She has a brother, Gabe, a father who still lives in Boston, and a mother who, two years before the story opens, died of a heart attack.
Ava is ambitious, driven, and competitive. She attended Stanford University and a top law school before joining a prestigious law firm, meeting the expectations for achievement and success that her family placed upon her. However, Ava never enjoyed the law as a profession. When she married Olivier, an ambitious surgeon, she liked thinking of them as a power couple, but after leaving her law firm to take care of her challenging toddler, Ava is conflicted; she doesn’t want to return to the law, but she also wants to have a job outside the home. When the story opens, Ava feels unfulfilled professionally and as a parent. Caring for Henri exhausts her, and her busy husband isn’t there for emotional support. Ava’s dissatisfaction with her life is the reason she takes an interest in Winnie’s schemes.
While she too wishes for success, Ava resents the expectations that were placed upon her, especially by a father who urged her to achieve rather than find self-fulfillment. Besides longing to make her own money to support herself and not be dependent on her husband, a turning point in Ava’s character arc comes when she realizes that Winnie has gained through fraud the life of ease and luxury that Ava has been working so hard for. As well as ambitious, Ava is crafty and quick-witted, which helps her succeed so well in manipulating others. Accustomed to living up to expectations, Ava learned to deliver what is expected of her, the chief example being a tale of remorse, vulnerability, and internal conflict that she delivers to the detective who is hearing her confession.
At the same time, Ava is loyal to her family and cares for her friends. She wishes she could have a communicative relationship with her father and brother. She wants her marriage to be happy and to feel she is with a true partner. But she feels most comfortable with people like her, and that turns out to be Winnie. While she toes the lines at meeting expectations and living up to appearances, Ava isn’t afraid to commit fraud here and there. She tells the detective she intends to give up a life of crime, but as soon as she’s able, Ava goes after what she really wants. Ultimately, Ava is a round yet static character. She is nuanced but changes little throughout the narrative; instead, she plays on expectations that she will be dynamic to deceive others and control situations to her benefit.
Winnie is a protagonist of the novel and point-of-view character in the second part. Winnie is around Ava’s age, and Ava describes her as very attractive: Her eyes are “anime-character huge, with thick double-eyelid folds, expertly contoured in coppery tones” (3). She has “sleek yet voluminous” hair and pale skin. At their first meeting, Winnie wears patent Louboutins and carries a Birkin handbag, showing that she is stylish and classy. While she once had a thick accent and wore unflattering clothes, Winnie is now polished and glamorous—all part of the façade she cultivates for her work.
Winnie’s family background made her scrappy and striving. Her Chinese parents are middle-class; her father was a school principal, and her mother was a secretary. When Winnie had to leave Stanford and lost her scholarship, her parents expressed disapproval and shame. Winnie didn’t think the life she wanted was possible in China, so she approached her aunt’s husband Bernard, who lived in Virginia, with a proposal to marry him so she could get her green card. Winnie, like Ava, is ambitious and driven. In college, Winnie took on extra jobs and borrowed Ava’s textbooks for class to finish her homework. When legitimate avenues for employment, like tutoring Chinese students, felt limiting and unenjoyable, Winnie agreed to Boss Mak’s suggestion to work for him. She is creative and opportunistic, finding more ways to grow their business and, when she’s caught at the handbag fraud, finding new cons.
At the same time, Winnie feels a longing to be settled and have a place of her own and so buys a house in New Hampshire. Where Ava is the one who seems to harbor big dreams, Winnie simply wishes for contentment. She doesn’t attach value to objects on their own but instead considers value in sentimental terms.
Olivier is a secondary and supporting character and is Ava’s husband. He contributes to the conflict that drives her to participate in Winnie’s schemes. Ava describes him as full of energy, ambitious, and stubborn. He double majored in physics and biology at Harvard while rowing on the crew team and played music to accompany performances for the dance department. Olivier is ethical and does not give in to Ava’s attempts to persuade him to help Boss Mak, even when Boss Mak makes a hefty donation to his hospital to support Oli’s favorite causes.
Olivier comes across as well-meaning but self-centered. He rents an apartment closer to his work without discussing it with Ava, and he tries to potty train Henri over a weekend while she is gone, an overly ambitious undertaking at which he is defeated. Ava attributes part of the strain in their marriage to money, but Oli does not seem able or interested in offering his wife emotional support or connection. He is too tired from work much of the time, though his new fiancée at the end suggests that Oli, too, has a chance at happiness. He is somewhat round but is static, not moving much throughout the narrative.
Mak Yui Fai, called Boss Mak, is a secondary character. He is a Chinese businessman who oversees a factory that produces handbags for luxury brands. He is 70 at the time of the story, and his heavy drinking has led him to require a liver transplant. When Winnie first met him, Boss Mak was tall and trim with a head of silver hair and he looked very sophisticated. They spent a weekend together, and Boss Mak sent her a replica handbag that later lured Winnie into working with him. She fell for his charm as well as this suggestion of nurturing. While Winnie feels guilty for betraying Boss Mak, however, Boss Mak does not seem guilty about anything. When Ava meets him, he has a new mistress, lovely and much younger than he is, though his wife is still alive. Ava understands that the expensive Birkin bag he gives her is an extortion, a warning to work with her husband to get Boss Mak his new liver.
Boss Mak seems to enjoy a warm relationship with his daughter, Mandy, who takes over his business when he becomes ill. Mandy, like Boss Mak, is polished, ambitious, and sophisticated. Mandy serves as a foil for Ava, who envies the former for her poise and lifestyle. Like Ava, Mandy presents a show of remorse and repentance when her shady business practices are discovered. Like Winnie and Ava both, however, it’s suggested that Mandy will recover from this setback and pursue her ambitions, eventually getting what she wants.
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