Paper Wife by Laila Ibrahim [Book Review]

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Title: Paper Wife

Author: Laila Ibrahim

Narrator: Nancy Wu

Genre: Literature & Fiction

Description:

From the bestselling author of Yellow Crocus comes a heart-wrenching story about finding strength in a new world.

Southern China, 1923. Desperate to secure her future, Mei Ling’s parents arrange a marriage to a widower in California. To enter the country, she must pretend to be her husband’s first wife―a paper wife.

On the perilous voyage, Mei Ling takes an orphan girl named Siew under her wing. Dreams of a better life in America give Mei Ling the strength to endure the treacherous journey and detainment on Angel Island. But when she finally reaches San Francisco, she’s met with a surprise. Her husband, Chinn Kai Li, is a houseboy, not the successful merchant he led her to believe.

Mei Ling is penniless, pregnant, and bound to a man she doesn’t know. Her fragile marriage is tested further when she discovers that Siew will likely be forced into prostitution. Desperate to rescue Siew, she must convince her husband that an orphan’s life is worth fighting for. Can Mei Ling find a way to make a real family―even if it’s built on a paper foundation?

Recent Reads: Paper Wife by Laila Ibrahim

I picked this one up for free, as a book available through Prime Reading, and listened to the audiobook on Audible.
I like historical fiction, so I was interested in this story which takes place in the 1920s in both a small village in China and later in San Francisco and Oakland, California.
The book follows Mei Ling, a young (18 at the beginning of the story) woman who is sold by her parents to a Chinese man living in California.
The man, Kai Li, had suddenly lost his wife and was left alone with a 2 year old son. He had papers for his wife and son and intended to replace his wife with a “paper wife.”
She would need to take on the identity of the woman, learning facts about her, and caring for her son.
Initially, her older sister was supposed to marry him. But when her older sister gets sick, she is forced to go in her stead.
I found this part of the book very interesting. There are lots of twists and turns and unexpected reveals as her husband and her get to know who they really are.
When she is held on Angel Island, before being permitted to the states, Mei Ling learns that she is pregnant with her husband’s baby and also begins to grow attached to an unattended little girl whom she met on the boat. The little girl, named Siew, is about five years old.
After they move into the states, Mei Ling learns that Siew was going to be sold into prostitution and this reality consumes Mei Ling.

In the book description, it says the Mei Ling must convince her husband that the orphan is worth saving, but I think that is a strange way to put it because her husband, Kai Li, is pretty much on board with all of this from day one.

>> Spoiler Alert <<

I read many reviews from other readers on Audible, who were frustrated by the turn of events in the last part of the book. The main character becomes obsessed with Siew, believing that she is possessed by the ghost of Siew’s dead mother. Mei Ling is woken up throughout the night, often in a panic, fretting over Siew’s wellbeing. Eventually, events escalate and Mei Ling manages to take custody of Siew. But even this is not enough to settle the ghost, and events escalate until Mei Ling is driven to murder the man that intended to sell Siew into prostitution.

This portion of the book feels full of plot holes, and I can see why people were so frustrated by the casual murder of a pathetic and desperate man. This event seems to make her husband fall more in love with her and it’s a bit strange.

However, I think this last act does make sense if you look at the book through the eyes of mental illness.
It was no doubt traumatizing for Mei Ling when she was pregnant from a man she barely knew, on a boat, and terrified. If we view this story from the perspective that Mei Ling is suffering from post partum depression, it begins to make sense as to why after the birth of her daughter that she becomes obsessed with Siew.
She spends very little time thinking about her daughter, Joy, even though she states that she loves her. During this time, she is said to grow more irritated with her children, Joy and Bo, as she is consumed with thoughts of Siew.
This is odd if you consider that a newborn would need her very much and Bo, who had never met his father and very recently lost his mother, was as much of an orphan as Siew was. But Mei Ling often talks about how well behaved Siew is, with no mention of how Bo at only two years old never throws a tantrum, is potty trained, and never complains.
She rarely takes a moment to appreciate him, at least not in the same way that she obsesses over Siew. As a mother who has been around a few two year olds, I did feel that she could’ve given the boy some more credit for his near perfect behavior and only having one potty accident in the entire book.
In my opinion, Mei Ling attaches to Siew in this obsessive way because she sees herself in her. She feels just as lost and abandoned as Siew must feel. She wants to protect her and dreams of sending her to University. Perhaps it is a way to rewrite her own circumstances?
I think that Mei Ling has post partum depression because she becomes obsessive and reactive after the birth of her daughter. She hallucinates the voice of Siew’s mother directing her to do things and during this time rarely mentions Joy. She might tell her husband how happy she is, but often talks about a deep sorrow in her soul. This, of course, is due to the loss of loved ones but perhaps also because of the trauma she has been through.
She states at one point that Siew reminds her of her little sister who once died, as a child, compounding the trauma that she associates with Siew.
When Mei Ling murders Siew’s uncle, she believes that Siew’s ghost mom will protect her from prosection. She breastfeeds her baby shortly after and can barely even look at her, but smiles at Siew.
Even at the end of the book, in the epilogue, where Joy is 12 and Siew and going off to University, she seems annoyed at Joy for seemingly no reason while Siew is the pride of her heart.
The author may not have meant to portray the main character this way, but this is the way that I read her relationships to her children. The favoritism, the PTSD symptoms, the frequent self harm, and her outburst of gross violence read as mental illness to me.
I do think that the author intended for us to feel that Siew’s uncles murder is justified, since he was going to sell a child into prostitution for money to pay off his own debts, but he also begs for help for a long time as he drowns. Mei Ling calls out that she is coming and will help him, dangling false hope in front of him. She never expresses guilt over her actions.

If Mei Ling doesn’t have some sort of postpartum depression, then her actions around Siew and hallucinating the ghost are almost psychotic. There’s definitely some sort of mental health issue at play, in my mind.
And I agree with other reviewers when I say that it doesn’t make sense that the gang that intended to take Siew would not just find her anyway.

However, I loved the relationship between Mei Ling and her husband. It was very sweet and he was very progressive and modern in the way he treated her (probably not accurate to the time period, but more pleasant to read.)
I also understood her desire to help Siew, a helpless girl in an impossible situation, though I wished that desire extended to her other children as well. And I dont think murder was the right call, since her husband believed he could find another way to pay the mans debts and save her.

This was definitely worth the read, even if it was a bit unrealistic or perhaps a quiet narrative on mental illness (without ever directly saying so.) The narrator did a fantastic job and I think she was a large part in why I continued listening to the story.
I’m not sure how culturally accurate it is, as I’m not Chinese (and neither is the author), but it seems historically accurate in how the immigration process went and the daily life that people endured there.

Id say give this one a try, especially if you want to listen to the audiobook!