Searching for Sylvie Lee

Searching For Sylvie Lee is a 2019 novel by Chinese American author Jean Kwok. As the title indicates, the story centers on the disappearance of protagonist Sylvie Lee, a high-achieving managerial consultant who has gone missing while visiting her dying grandmother in the Netherlands. The three narrators—Sylvie herself; Sylvie’s sister, Amy; and their mother, Ma—overlap in their discovery of long-held family secrets. Amy and Ma initially believe that Sylvie’s visit coincided with a work trip. However, the two women soon learn that Sylvie’s life was not nearly as stable as it appeared from the outside. In the end, the revelation of the circumstances behind Sylvie’s disappearance allow the family an opportunity to heal, even in the face of great loss and pain. Kwok is known for telling engaging stories that speak to the immigrant experience both in the United States and abroad. Searching for Sylvie Lee, like her other novels Girl in Translation, Mambo in Chinatown, and The Leftover Woman, has an interest in the cultural dissonance that immigrants experience. To the dramatic complexities of family dynamics, Kwok adds the pain of anti-Asian prejudice and racism; the frustration associated with the low-paying, menial work that many immigrants take on; and the tension brought about as culture shifts as a result of migration.

This guide references the 2019 paperback edition by William Morrow, a HarperCollins imprint.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain descriptions of racism, antisemitism, incest, statutory rape, and suicide.

Plot Summary

The novel opens by introducing the Lee and Tan families, which provides relevant context for the narrative, and by establishing the disappearance of Sylvie Lee as the novel’s primary conflict. Three female narrators communicate this information, with each chapter told from a single narrator’s first-person perspective: Sylvie; Sylvie’s sister, Amy; or their Ma.

Not long after Ma and Pa married, the Lee family left China to settle in New York City, where Pa found work at a seafood market and Ma at a laundry. The couple made barely enough money to live on. When Ma discovered her first pregnancy, she knew that she could not work while caring for her child. Therefore, Ma and Pa sent the infant girl, Sylvie, to live with distant cousin Helena Tan and her family in the Netherlands. Ma’s own mother lived with Helena at the time, and Sylvie was to be a playmate for Helena’s son, Lukas. Several years after Sylvie departed, Ma gave birth to Amy. When Amy was two and Sylvie was nine, Sylvie returned to New York City to live with her family.

Sylvie is now 32 and, as far as her family knows, a successful managerial consultant. Amy, although she has completed college and intends to pursue a teaching degree, lacks her sister’s drive. She still lives with her parents and is struggling to find her way in the world. Sylvie has traveled to the Netherlands to visit their dying grandma. When Lukas calls to report Sylvie’s mysterious disappearance, the family panics. Amy searches Sylvie’s apartment, finding the space in a state of chaos. Sylvie’s husband, Jim, seems to have moved out. When Amy goes to see him, Jim is sheepish and evasive. Amy decides to fly to the Netherlands to help look for her sister.

As the novel switches perspectives among Ma, Amy, and Sylvie, readers learn that Sylvie’s childhood in the Netherlands was difficult. Ma’s cousin, Helena, was emotionally abusive, and Sylvie always felt “ugly,” foreign, and unwanted. Sylvie’s cousin, Lukas, had been her only comfort; the two enjoyed a close bond during their childhood. Helena’s husband, Willem, had a deep attachment to Sylvie that Sylvie always felt was a bit odd. When Sylvie returned to her parents in New York City, she felt completely uprooted and had to learn English. Dividing her time between school and caring for her young sister, she developed a strong work ethic. Naturally intellectually gifted, she was always at the top of her class, though she continued to feel out of place among her mostly white, affluent classmates.

As an adult, Sylvie struggles in her marriage to Jim. Jim, a guidance counselor, had an affair with an underage student, and Sylvie left him as a result. Her trip to the Netherlands is in part an attempt to distance herself from her estranged husband. Jim’s abuse is another family secret that surfaces during the course of the narrative. Jim even follows Sylvie to the Netherlands to ensure she will not reveal to anyone that he is a statutory rapist.

While in the Netherlands, Sylvie renews her friendship with Lukas; takes cello lessons from the handsome Filip; and spends time with Estelle, Lukas’s apparent girlfriend. Sexual tension arises among the friends, and Sylvie finds herself attracted to both Lukas and Filip. The three convince Sylvie to take a weekend trip to Venice for her birthday, where the tension comes to a head. Lukas and Filip, apparently jealous over Sylvie’s attentions, start an argument that devolves into a physical altercation. When the group returns, Grandma has died.

Amy learns all of this information slowly during her own trip to the Netherlands. As part of the police investigation into Sylvie’s disappearance, Amy also learns that Helena, Willem, and Lukas recently experienced a break-in. Nothing was taken except for a bag of Grandma’s jewelry: a family treasure that she intended to pass down to Ma, Sylvie, and Amy, but which Helena felt was rightfully hers for taking care of Grandma for so many years.

Uncertain whose story to trust, Amy continues to seek information. Ultimately, she learns that although Sylvie and Filip had been flirting, it was Sylvie and Lukas who were secretly in love. Filip, although he has always denied it, is gay and has always been in love with Lukas. Lukas and Sylvie then realize that they are not distant cousins, but half-siblings: Ma had an affair with Willem, and now Willem and Sylvie share a birthmark. Helena and Willem had always known, which explains both Willem’s seemingly inappropriate attachment and Helena’s inexplicable hatred for the young girl.

Sylvie’s body is located. Though Amy is sure at first that Lukas killed Sylvie in a fit of jealous rage, it emerges that Sylvie died by suicide. Sylvie felt unable to live with the dissolution of her marriage; her career troubles; and on top of that, the knowledge that she engaged in an incestuous relationship with her half-brother. Lukas has saved the bag of Grandma’s jewelry, which he gives to the Lee family. When all the facts of Sylvie’s disappearance come to light, revealing the family’s secret history as well, there is a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation rather than anger and resentment. The novel ends with the sense that, for Amy and her parents, the future will be better than the past.