LONGLISTED FOR THE STORY PRIZE

A BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK
Ho's debut work is the perfect modern example of great American fiction. It's a brilliant series of stories about the lives of two Taiwanese American women and their friendship over 20 years as they explore identity, sexuality, heartbreak and family secrets...What a great read! I feel like Fiona and Jane are friends of mine. I cannot wait to see what Ho writes next. Fiona and Jane brings you into the lives of these women in a relatable, authentic way. You will love it.
Jake Tapper
Over the course of the book Fiona and Jane become real and electric and precious people. The stories move through intimate, cinematic scenes. . . . The world Ho creates between the two women feels like one friend reading the other s story, wishing she were there. . . . [E]ven to those not from Los Angeles, Ho s debut collection feels like a shared experience.
Tammy Tarng, The New York Times Book Review

Fiona And Jane captures the textures of female friendship and all the intensity, loyalty, and occasional torment of it.
Ailsa Chang, NPR s All Things Considered

An engaging first book. . . . Secrets and betrayals resound through many of the stories. . . . There s also an endearing sexual boldness in Fiona and Jane. These are Western women who grew up in the Nineties. . . . It s a vibrant, sexually active world these friendships are acted out in. . . . Emotional accuracy lights up the work. . . . Ho s writing evokes youthful folly, ever glorious and stupid, with a shadow of later awareness in the prose.
Joan Silber, The New York Review of Books
Jean Chen Ho s debut collection . . . evokes a distinctive multi-ethnic Asian American experience coming of age in Los Angeles in the late 20th century: R&B mixtapes, Cool Water cologne, red faces drunk on soju. . . . Through shifting perspectives and evocative milieus (from night markets to seedy Korean bars and exclusive clubs), the assemblage comes as close to a primer on modern L.A. Asian American rites of passage as anything in recent memory.
Lisa Wong Macabasco, Vogue

Ho s strong debut follows two Taiwanese American besties from grade school through their 30s, flipping through decades to highlight key relationships, crises, nights of drinking and sex. Other people, the world and the girls themselves change, but the friendship between beautiful Fiona and sturdy Jane endures.
People

"This sparkling debut collection navigates the intimate contours of female friendship. . . . Ho's granularity and lush detail the flavor of taquitos, having tender sex with a lover for the last time are in part why the stories are irresistible. But it's Ho's wisdom and compassion for her characters that make us yearn to stay in her world after we've reached the last page."
Oprah Daily, "Great Reads You Don't Want to Miss"

Fiona and Jane is a refreshingly honest treatment of long-term friendships particularly their inexorable ebb and flow. Story by story, the book captures the way friendships negotiate their own boundaries, at times dissolving unexpectedly and at others flourishing into something more, even if just fleetingly.
Meena Venkataramanan, The Los Angeles Times

A confidently nonlinear debut collection that sluices through the interiority of its protagonists without diminishing the passion and powerfully mysterious intimacy of female friendship.
Vulture, The Best Books of the Year (So Far)
Intricately rendered. . . . Fiona and Jane celebrates a woman s ability to be late, to show up in their own lives when and where they want to, to change their minds, to be lonely and to be in love, and to be respected regardless.
Rosa Boshier, The Washington Post
Ho renders both women so real that they begin to feel like people you ve encountered and hung out with. . . . Its precisely the fact that the women s trials and tribulations feel refreshingly life-sized that makes the book ring so beautifully, sometimes terribly, true.
Ilana Masad, [...]
In a story told in alternating voices, two Taiwanese American women, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen, navigate identity, sexuality and heartbreak over two decades in this intimate exploration of female friendship.
USA Today

[Fiona and Jane] explores the murky layers of female friendship and the meaning of home."
Entertainment Weekly

The complex depth of female friendship provides endless fodder for Jean Chen Ho in her debut, Fiona and Jane. Centering on nearly two decades of best friendship between the two titular Taiwanese American women, the [book] reads like a love letter to the beauty and intensity of their relationship. Bonded by their shared experience of coming of age in Los Angeles in immigrant families, Fiona and Jane s friendship is challenged over the years by distance, romantic relationships and betrayal. But throughout it all, they are constants in each other s lives reminders for one another of who they once were and all that they can be.
Time
This frank and moving debut by Jean Chen Ho, told in short stories from differing eras and perspectives, follows a pair of Taiwanese American best friends as they navigate grief, ambition, and the changing realities of their friendship.
Marie Claire

In Ho s debut book of fiction, two childhood best friends growing up in Los Angeles fall in and out of love, navigate estranged family members, and deal with casual racism in these linked short stories about friendship over time.
Tomi Obaro, Buzzfeed

Fiona and Jane are best friends, navigating their tumultuous teenage years together, as well as their family histories and all that comes with them. But when Fiona moves across the country, their bond weakens and threatens to break. This [book] about the power of female friendship will give you a gorgeous peek into both women's perspectives on a shared story that has as many facets as they do.
Good Housekeeping

Spanning the globe and 20 years of friendship, two Taiwanese-American women grow up, grow apart and grow together in love, secrets, grief and heartbreak.
Parade

A beautiful, sometimes heartbreaking story about the lives of two Asian American girls and how they navigate everything from same-sex relationships to parent loss and beyond.
Zibby Owens, Katie Couric Media

Have you had one of those friendships that served you for many, many years but now exists only in the past tense? Fiona and Jane, Taiwanese girls living in Los Angeles, were best friends all throughout childhood, high school, and college. Then [Fiona] moves away, and like so many long friendships, theirs evaporates. Ten years later we meet them just in that tender, terrifying moment of reconnecting.
Glamour

Multi-decade friendship books are hard to pull off and Jean Chen Ho s debut collection Fiona and Jane is a splendid addition to the genre. Expansive and intimate, it traces the titular characters coming of age across Taiwan, Southern California, and New York City. Even in the expansive scope of these singular stories, she draws our attention to unseen intimacies both tender and cruel between friends, family, and lovers.
Benedict Nguy n, BOMB

Virtuosic. . . . A tender portrait of female friendship in all its complexity and depth. . . . Ho s writing is so vivid, witty and warm that after finishing Fiona and Jane, readers will miss these characters like their own best friends.
Mike Alberti, The Star Tribune
Intimate and irreverent. . . . Ho s stories tackle themes of identity, shame, grief, sexuality and the intensity and complexity of female friendship.
Victoria Namkung, NBC Asian American
A fierce debut. . . . We follow Fiona Lin and Jane Shen across time zones and through a whirlwind of settings: a night market in Taipei, a hospital room in New York City, a greasy Korean bar in Garden Grove. Against a backdrop of familial tension and messy romances, Fiona and Jane navigate their burgeoning sexualities, grapple with inherited traumas, and struggle with the aftermath of impulsive decisions. . . . The stories are also saturated with queerness. . . . At the same time, Fiona and Jane doesn t shy away from the brutal complexities of queer life.
Ariel Chu, them.
A wonderful debut. . . . [Fiona and Jane] is a book that is built on memory, a book that speaks to the importance and difficulties and richness of friendship between women over time, a book that braids its form and content together to create meaning.
Laura Spence-Ash, Ploughshares

A tender portrait of female friendship. It s about two Taiwanese American women, Fiona and Jane longtime best friends whose relationship is strained when life scatters them to opposite coasts. The story spans decades as they grow together and apart, navigating love, death, complicated families and heartbreak.
The Washington Post

Two young Taiwanese women navigate friendship and sexuality in this 20-year narrative. Living in New York and Los Angeles, Fiona and Jane tell alternating stories about what it's like to be Asian in America, the bonds of friendship as girls become women and what loyalty truly means.
Zibby Owens, Good Morning America online

Refreshing and intimate, this debut collection of stories features the underrepresented voices of Taiwanese American best friends, Fiona and Jane, and the evolution of their lives and relationship over 20 years.
Ms. Magazine

Spanning nearly thirty years, Jean Chen Ho s linked story cycle centers on the ever-evolving relationship between two best friends as they weather the hard-partying highs and the lonesome lows of youth, the comforts and frustrations of filial duty, and the often-baffling search for some semblance of stability.
Electric Literature,...