The Son of Good Fortune - by Lysley Tenorio (Paperback)

About the Book

"An undocumented Filipino teenager redefines his relationships with his mother, his culture, and the place he calls home"--

Book Synopsis

A Recommended Book From:
USA Today * The Chicago Tribune * Book Riot * Refinery 29 * InStyle * The Minneapolis
Star-Tribune * Publishers Weekly * Baltimore Outloud * Omnivoracious * Lambda Literary * Goodreads * Lit Hub * The Millions

FINALIST FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE
WINNER OF THE NEW AMERICAN VOICES AWARD
From award-winning author Lysley Tenorio,
comes a big hearted debut novel following an undocumented Filipino son as he
navigates his relationship with his mother, an uncertain future, and the place
he calls home
Excel spends his days trying to seem like an unremarkable American
teenager. When he's not working at The Pie Who Loved Me (a spy-themed pizza
shop) or passing the time with his girlfriend Sab (occasionally in one of their
town's seventeen cemeteries), he carefully avoids the spotlight.
But Excel knows
that his family is far from normal. His mother, Maxima, was once a Filipina
B-movie action star who now makes her living scamming men online. The old man
they live with is not his grandfather, but Maxima's lifelong martial arts
trainer. And years ago, on Excel's tenth birthday, Maxima revealed a secret
that he must keep forever. "We are 'TNT'--tago ng tago," she told him, "hiding and
hiding." Excel is undocumented--and one accidental slip could uproot his entire
life.
Casting aside the paranoia and secrecy of his childhood, Excel takes a
leap, joining Sab on a journey south to a ramshackle desert town called Hello
City. Populated by drifters, old hippies, and washed-up techies--and existing
outside the normal constructs of American society--Hello City offers Excel a
chance to forge his own path for the first time. But after so many years of
trying to be invisible, who does he want to become? And is it possible to put
down roots in a country that has always considered you an outsider?
Thrumming
with energy and at once critical and hopeful, The Son of Good Fortune is a
luminous story of a mother and son testing the strength of their bond to their
country--and to each other.

Review Quotes

"Lysley Tenorio's The Son of Good Fortune is flat-out brilliant, and what makes it so wondrous is how Tenorio controls the complexity of the narrative. How can a book be filled with so much humor, such a light touch, and yet still touch that weird place in our heart that can break us apart? Excel and his mother, Maxima, are characters you won't forget, and the world in which they exist, stuck between belonging and not belonging, does not deserve them." - Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here
"Propulsive prose, captivating characters, and vital details of immigrant life.... A masterfully constructed story of identity and ambition and an authentic portrait of one unforgettable Filipino family." - Kirkus Reviews
"Filled with the kind of absurdities that accompany the most difficult truths, Lysley Tenorio's brilliant, witty novel about the love of a mother and son, the immigrant experience in America, and the surreality of our current reality, is bold, ambitious, and unforgettable." - Refinery 29
"You know the feeling of picking up a book and realizing within ten pages that what you're reading is something... special? Something different? Well, that's what it's like reading Lysley Tenorio's novel.... A funny and kind novel about home and identity." - Omnivoracious
"When you don't belong where you are, where exactly do you belong? Lysley Tenorio's engaging and comic first novel about immigration and identity asks this question with compassion and savage humor." - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Full of heart, wisdom, and humor, The Son of Good Fortune is an unforgettable novel of mothers and sons, secrets and truth, and what it means to belong, told through the story of one undocumented Filipino family." - Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers
"The Son of Good Fortune defies categorization -- it's an immigrant tale, a character study, a heartfelt and hilarious adventure." - InStyle Magazine
"In this perceptive and sensitive novel, Lysley Tenorio views the troubled American Dream through the eyes of Excel, an undocumented immigrant literally born in the air between the Philippines and the United States. The result, in The Son of Good Fortune, is a nuanced and subtle account of that most basic American dynamic, the melancholic and sometimes devastating fluctuation between promise and failure, happiness and its opposite." - Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer
"I have a new favorite novel on my shelf.... A field study of the glamorous allure of the American dream and the eternal ache of its exclusion. Tenorio's great talent lies in underpinning every moment of flash and humor with love, longing and the ever-forlorn question of identity. This novel is like a stone skipped across the Pacific, all the way to Manila. Visualize it, that series of rings lingering on the ocean's surface, expanding, intersecting, intermingling to form a chain that anchors these characters, connects them, and after years of binding them, sets them free." - Adam Johnson, author of The Orphan Master's Son
"The Son of Good Fortune is a deeply compassionate and richly imagined novel about the families we make and the families who make us. Lysley Tenorio peels back such labels as "American," "Filipino," "immigrant," and "undocumented" to show us a mother and son in all their bright humanity--and the forms of love, connection, and survival available to them in a broken country. Tenorio is a master storyteller, and--like his brilliant collection, Monstress--this is a gorgeous, searing wonder of a book." - Mia Alvar, author of In the Country