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Author: Angela S. Choi, 2010.
Genre: Black Comedy. Chic-lit. Satire. Serial Murder.
Other Details: Paperback. 250 pages.
"I hate Hello Kitty. I hate her for not having a mouth or fangs like a proper kitty. ....She can't even scratch your eyes out. Just clawless, fangless, voiceless with that placid, blank expression topped by a pink bow." - pps 16-17 'Hello Kitty Must Die'.
Fiona Yu is a San Franciscan lawyer pulling in a six figure salary and regularly working an 80 hour week. Underneath her composed exterior she feels torn between the traditional Chinese values of her family and the social mores of 21st Century USA. She decides to take her own virginity so that she can be free to date without the impediment of an intact hymen and makes a surprising discovery. This leads her to a reunion with her old school friend, Sean Kilroy. Sean had been a teenage delinquent though now was a very successful surgeon.
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Although I knew from the title and some publicity material that this novel was about an Asian-American woman's journey to free herself from what she considers the stereotype of the pretty, passive Asian women that she terms a 'Hello Kitty', I had no idea that its dark humour would be laced with lashings of murder and mayhem.
There were certainly echoes of Bret Easton Ellis' “American Psycho" and Jeff Lindsay's Dexter novels, combining very dark goings-on with social satire. I enjoyed it very much for its strangeness and charm.
Excerpt from 'Hello Kitty Must Die'