Sylvie Lee is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. When she was very young, her parents were too poor to raise her in America, so they allowed her to be raised by cousins and her maternal grandmother in the Netherlands. Life wasn't easy there for Sylvie—an awkward child, she faced a lot of ridicule as well as racism, being one of very few Chinese among her Dutch classmates and neighbors.
While Sylvie's grandmother and her cousin Willem treated her with love, Willem's wife Helena took an instant dislike to her, and seemed to single her out for mistreatment. Sylvie didn't understand why she was deserving of such cruelty, but she took comfort in her relationship with Willem and Helena's son, Lukas.
At age nine, Sylvie returns home to the U.S. She now has a younger sister, Amy, for whom she becomes a protector, and despite there being a seven-year age difference, the two forge a very close relationship. Sylvie encourages Amy at every turn, gives her the courage and support to do anything she wants, since their parents spend most of their time working to make ends meet.
Years later, Sylvie returns to the Netherlands when she learns her grandmother is dying. As much as she has changed from the awkward, ugly girl to a beautiful, intelligent woman, returning to the Netherlands reopens old resentments with Helena, and confuses her heart. And then Sylvie vanishes. Her Dutch cousins assumed she was on her way home; her family in America thought she was still in the Netherlands.
"That had always been Sylvie's role, to go forth and have adventures. My job was to wait for her to return home safely. Now the country mouse has been forced into the great devouring world."
As Amy tries to figure out what happened to Sylvie, she begins uncovering secrets that Sylvie kept hidden from them all, things that showed her life wasn't as successful and happy as she had led everyone to believe. When Amy travels to the Netherlands—her first time traveling anywhere, much less internationally—she finds herself in the midst of the tensions of her Dutch relatives, and discovers that in the Netherlands, things for Sylvie were confusing and painful beyond simply grieving for her grandmother.
What happened to Sylvie? Did she simply need to take a break from it all, as some suggested, or was something more nefarious at play? Did someone harm her? Is someone responsible for her disappearance and perhaps her death? Amy is a stranger in an unfamiliar country surrounded by people with secrets, and yet there's even more she doesn't know.
Searching for Sylvie Lee is narrated by Amy, Sylvie, and their mother, and shifts back and forth through time. Through each woman's eyes you see things that go unsaid, emotions that are hidden, and fear of the truth being exposed. There are some powerful emotions in this story, and so many places where if only people had spoken up, things could have been different.
I'm always a fan of stories about family dysfunction, and this is certainly one of those! Kwok is a very talented storyteller; I read one of her previous books, Girl in Translation, a number of years ago, and her skills have gotten even stronger since then. Even though there is a great deal of melodrama in the plot, none of what occurs seems far-fetched or unrealistic.
I definitely figured out some of the mystery before it was revealed, and while I wasn't necessarily surprised by how things ultimately unfolded, I had hoped for a different conclusion. At times, too, the book's pacing was very slow, and I wanted less flashbacks and more focusing on Sylvie's disappearance.
If you're looking for a mystery, I don't know that this will foot the bill, but if you're looking for a well-told story of a family shattered by secrets, Searching for Sylvie Lee may be just the book for you.
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