“With Fiona and Jane, Jean Chen Ho announces herself as a bold and provocative new talent to watch out for. In this sexy and stylish set of stories about friendship, love, loyalty and betrayal, she fearlessly delves into the intimacies between women and delivers a knockout of a book.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen
“Unsentimental, subtly subversive, and always surprising, Jean Chen Ho’s beautiful debut glides me into revelations about the ambiguities of friendship, queer sexuality, and love . . . I love this book.” —Cathy Park Hong
“Fiona and Jane is a high wire act, the stories born of the experiments in daring you feel around the friend you are sure will always be there. Amid the intricate fretwork of ad hoc desires, missing family, and rehearsals for adulthood, a cool-handed nerve shapes it all.” —Alexander Chee
“The book I did not know I was waiting to be written — one that brilliantly examines what it feels like to be young and a woman and hungry for a meaningful life right now . . . Read this remarkable work of fiction and feel the world open up around you.” —Angela Flournoy
“Fierce, sharp and emotionally resonant. . . . A love letter to Asian American women’s friendship, in all its most beautiful iterations.” —Lisa Ko
“I loved every one of these vibrant, sharply observed stories . . . spiky, surprising, and funny, suffused with wit and sadness. A striking debut from a very talented writer.” —Charles Yu
“An iconic pair of friends who are messy and sexy and so thoroughly alive that I’m pretty sure we once snuck into a club together. Joyously specific and true, Fiona and Jane is my new favorite book.” —Jade Chang
“Jean Chen Ho writes with great beauty and sensitivity about moments in life when the unsaid or unsayable can no longer be held back and the truth gushes forth in all its rawness. This book is a treasure.” —Laila Lalami
ABOUT FIONA AND JANE
A witty, warm, and irreverent book that traces the lives of two young Taiwanese American women as they navigate friendship, sexuality, identity, and heartbreak over two decades.
Best friends since second grade, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen explore the lonely freeways and seedy bars of Los Angeles together through their teenage years, surviving unfulfilling romantic encounters, and carrying with them the scars of their families’ tumultuous pasts. Fiona was always destined to leave, her effortless beauty burnished by fierce ambition—qualities that Jane admired and feared in equal measure. When Fiona moves to New York and cares for a sick friend through a breakup with an opportunistic boyfriend, Jane remains in California and grieves her estranged father’s sudden death, in the process alienating an overzealous girlfriend. Strained by distance and unintended betrayals, the women float in and out of each other’s lives, their friendship both a beacon of home and a reminder of all they’ve lost.
In stories told in alternating voices, Jean Chen Ho’s debut collection peels back the layers of female friendship—the intensity, resentment, and boundless love—to probe the beating hearts of young women coming to terms with themselves, and each other, in light of the insecurities and shame that holds them back.
Spanning countries and selves, Fiona and Jane is an intimate portrait of a friendship, a deep dive into the universal perplexities of being young and alive, and a bracingly honest account of two Asian women who dare to stake a claim on joy in a changing, contemporary America.
Click here for the Penguin Random House Reader’s Guide for Fiona and Jane
A BEST BOOK OF 2022: NPR • TIME • VULTURE • VOGUE • OPRAH DAILY • GLAMOUR • ELLE • ELECTRIC LITERATURE
AN OFFICIAL SELECTION OF: January 2022 Indie Next List • Book of the Month • Belletrist Book Club • Jake Tapper’s CNN Book Club • #ReadWithMarieClaire Book Club • Megan Rapinoe x Literati Book Club
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY: USA TODAY | PARADE | BUZZFEED | GOOD HOUSEKEEPING | MARIE CLAIRE | E! NEWS | PEOPLE | ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY | TOWN & COUNTRY | FORTUNE | GLAMOUR | W MAGAZINE | NYLON | BUSTLE | POPSUGAR | ELECTRIC LITERATURE | THE RUMPUS | DEBUTIFUL | THE MILLIONS | MS. MAGAZINE | AND MORE!
REVIEWS
New York Times: “Circles sexuality, money and religion with grace . . . intimate, cinematic.”
Washington Post: “Exemplifying the realities of messy millennial womanhood . . . the beautiful tangle of two lives in the midst of being lived.”
NPR: “Ho renders both women so real that they begin to feel like people you've encountered."
Ploughshares: “Speaks to the importance and difficulties and richness of friendship between women over time.“
Asian Review of Books: “Ho is a masterful storyteller.”
Star Tribune: “Virtuosic . . . vivid, witty and warm.”
Alta: “A coming-of-age experience that feels searingly true to life.”
Vogue: “A primer on modern L.A. Asian American rites of passage.”
Hyphen: “I couldn’t help but smile . . . a distinct pleasure.”
Vulture: “A confidently nonlinear debut collection that sluices through the interiority of its protagonists.“
TIME: “Captures what makes female friendship so special . . . intimate and layered.”
Oprah Daily: “Sparkling . . . irresistible.”
New York Review of Books: “Emotional accuracy lights up the work . . . Ho’s writing evokes youthful folly, ever glorious.”
Boston Globe: “deftly [renders] both young women in their messy passage to adulthood.”
PRESS & INTERVIEWS
NPR’s All Things Considered: Fiona and Jane Captures a Friendship's Intensity, Loyalty and Occasional Torment
Bomb Magazine: Just Two Beautiful Asian Bimbos: Jean Chen Ho interviewed by Benedict Nguyen
Washington Post: The Books to Read in 2022 Based On What You Loved in 2021
them: Jean Chen Ho’s Fiona and Jane Explores the Queer Messiness of Friendship
NBC: One of the New Year’s Most Anticipated Books Places Asian American Friendship at its Center
Los Angeles Times: Are you a Fiona or a Jane? Jean Chen Ho’s Debut Captures a Bittersweet L.A. Friendship
Observer: Jean Chen Ho Talks Friendship and Growing Up in Fiona and Jane
PEN America: The PEN Ten, An Interview with Jean Chen Ho
WNYC All of It with Alison Stewart: 2022 Debuts: Jean Chen Ho
KCRW Greater LA with Steve Chiotakis: Taiwanese-Angeleno identity, friendship, and sexuality are at heart of ‘Fiona and Jane’
Orange County Register: Why Jean Chen Ho’s Fiona and Jane Takes You on a Ride Across Southern California’s Suburbs
Autostraddle: Jean Chen Ho on Fiona and Jane, the Eros of Friendship, and Finding Your Fiction Community
CNN: Jean Chen Ho on Jake Tapper’s Book Club
Los Angeles Times: Meet the Writers: Jean Chen Ho and the San Gabriel Valley Food Club
NPR’s All Things Considered: Book We Love 2022
Glamour: The 40 Best Books of 2022
Wall Street Journal: Who Read What in 2022: Hua Hsu
ELLE: Editors’ Favorite Books Of 2022
Electric Literature: Favorite Short Story Collections of 2022
Literary Hub: 88 Writers on the Books They Loved in 2022
Harper’s Bazaar: The Bazaar 100 2022: The Very Best Fashion, Beauty, TV, Movies, Music, Books, and Memes of the Year
New York Times Book Review: 6 New Paperbacks to Read this Week