The Bride Test, Helen Hoang, review: a sweet romance that explores autism

The bestselling author of ‘The Kiss Quotient’ accomplishes somewhat of a tour de force in her new novel in making us understand – and feel – both perspectives in this romance

Clémence Michallon

Friday 07 June 2019 15:01 BST

(Eric Kieu)

When we first meet Esme Tran, the heroine of Helen Hoang’s new novel The Bride Test, she’s busy scrubbing toilets in a Ho Chi Minh City hotel. A couple of elegant, heartbroken women distract her from her task by coming in, one after the other, looking for a private spot to dry their tears. The next person to walk in is a wealthy Vietnamese-American woman who, as it turns out, is looking for a wife for her son Khai Diep – and eliminated the two aforementioned women. Cô Nga (as she introduces herself) does, however, take an interest in Esme. Would she like to come to California for a summer and attempt to make the very handsome Khai her husband?

Esme is (somewhat understandably) reluctant. She’s a single mother to her five-year-old daughter, and her own mother and grandmother need her at home. But travelling to America is a unique opportunity – one that could set her on the path to finding her biological father, an elusive Berkeley graduate. So Esme crosses the Pacific Ocean, determined to make the most of her stay in California. What follows is a sweet, touching romance that is light and breezy in tone but not in content, and a fitting follow-up to Hoang’s critically acclaimed debut The Kiss Quotient (2018).

Khai, naturally, doesn’t take kindly to his mother’s insistence on finding him a spouse, especially when Esme’s presence in his apartment begins disrupting his well-established routine. But – this is, after all, a romance – he does find himself irresistibly attracted to Esme, who herself isn’t indifferent to Khai’s charms. On the surface, nothing stands in the lovebirds’ way (Esme is there quite literally for the sole purpose of partnering up with Khai), except themselves. Khai has autism and believes himself incapable of love. Esme, meanwhile, is convinced she, a self-described country girl from Vietnam, isn’t good enough for Khai – and her insecurities project onto most of her interactions with him.

The 25 best books by women

Show all 25

1/25The 25 best books by women

The 25 best books by women

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

Austen remains one of history’s greatest masters in two tricky literary fields: the world of romance and the world of social satire. Pride and Prejudice, then, sees her at the peak of her powers. Through the eyes of Elizabeth Bennet, her sharp-witted protagonist, we witness upper-class Regency England as both a dream and a farce. Not all is as it seems, and society betrays its holloweness when it deems that money should trump love.

The 25 best books by women

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

Despite the fact that Hurston was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, Their Eyes Were Watching God was largely rejected by her peers. It was during the 1970s and 1980s that her novel was essentially rediscovered, with many contemporary black feminists heralding the genius of her work. The novel focuses on Janie Crawford, a black woman who refuses to give in to bitterness or sorrow, as she navigates three marriages and a life marked by poverty. It’s a story bursting with passion and soulfulness.

The 25 best books by women

The Lottery and Other Stories – Shirley Jackson

Jackson probed the darkest corners of the American psyche during the 1940s and 1950s, all thanks to her collections of ghost stories, including 1959’s The Haunting of Hill House, which was recently adapted into a Netflix series. With several novels and over 200 short stories for readers to get lost in, there are very few horror writers like her. That’s especially true when it comes to (arguably) her greatest work, 1948’s The Lottery, which traces a small town’s annual tradition to its sinister conclusion.

The 25 best books by women

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

A Pulitzer Prize winner, To Kill a Mockingbird has carved its place in history. Its depiction of racial injustice in the American Deep South was startling frank for the 1960s, in a way that undeniably had a social impact at the time – it became an instant sensation and is now widely taught in American schools. Lee writes about the world’s cruelties with an honesty and compassion that still resonates, with the character of Atticus Finch becoming a enduring model of integrity for the legal profession.

The 25 best books by women

Kindred - Octavia E Butler

Butler was a key figure in sci-fi history, expanding the boundaries of what the genre could achieve and what it could come to represent. First published in 1979, the book still feels as fresh as ever in its first-person account of a young black writer, Dana, who through strange circumstances, finds herself travelling between her own reality and a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation. It’s through this unusual theme that Butler can explore the lasting trauma of America’s history on African-Americans today.

The 25 best books by women

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre feels, in many ways, thoroughly modern today. Although originally published under the pen name “Currer Bell”, it feels likes a dive into the mind of Brontë herself. The story is told through a first-person narrative that feels so psychologically intimate, it’s as if she’s sharing the secrets of her own world with us. We follow Jane through her school years, all the way to her later employment by Mr Rochester, a tortured soul who she falls madly in love with, with many aspects of her journey reflecting elements of Brontë’s own life.

The 25 best books by women

Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Adichie, who was born in Nigeria, is considered one of the most original literary voices of her generation. You can see why this is when reading Half of a Yellow Sun, which depicts the brutality of the Nigerian Civil War of the late 1960s, as seen through four different perspectives: twin daughters of a wealthy businessman, a British citizen, a professor, and a houseboy. It’s history via an achingly human lens.

The 25 best books by women

White Teeth – Zadie Smith

Smith remains a modern titan of the British literary scene, thanks partially to White Teeth, which is considered one of the most sensational fiction debuts of all time, becoming an immediate bestseller and sweeping up multiple awards. It’s a tale of two men – Bangladeshi Samad Iqbal and Englishman Archie Jones – who become friends after being stationed together during WWII. Their return to London sees the book examine British post-war attitudes to those from formerly colonised countries, although Smith ensures the subject is approached with both heart and a sense of humour.

The 25 best books by women

The Hour of the Star - Clarice Lispector

Lispector was a literary innovator. The Hour of the Star, published posthumously in 1977, invents a narrator named Rodrigo SM, who in turns tells the story of Macabéa, a poor young woman who hails from Alagoas, where Lispector’s family first settled when they immigrated to Brazil. However, the way Rodrigo perceives Macabéa, and reckons with her story, itself creates a dialogue between the two characters, calling into question notions of identity and authorship.

The 25 best books by women

Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

One of literature’s sharpest minds and inspiration to the feminist movement in the 1970s, Woolf not only helped pioneer the use of the stream of consciousness as a narrative device, but utilised it to speak openly about sexuality, mental illness, and gender roles. The novel largely follows the inner thoughts of two characters, Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith, one a high-society woman in post-WWI England and the other a veteran suffering from shell shock.

The 25 best books by women

A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories – Flannery O’Connor

O’Connor wrote hard stories for a hard world. Her unsentimental, sardonic use of the Southern Gothic style helped weave her own take on the parable, in which the morally weak often face violent, painful punishment for their misdeeds. That said, the door is always open for transformation and spiritual awakening by the story’s conclusion, with her work frequently confronting ideas of morality and ethics through the lens of her own Catholic faith.

The 25 best books by women

Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi

At times, it seems less like Persepolis is a story. Satrapi’s graphic novel, published in two volumes in 2000 and 2004, feels more like an invitation, as she takes our hand and leads us through her childhood and early adult years, so that we can see through the eyes of a curious, funny, smart young girl who must face the personal repercussions of war and religious extremism in Iran during and after the Islamic Revolution. It’s the political seen through the personal, but it’s always Satrapi’s own spirit that shines the brightest.

The 25 best books by women

Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

Many have now come to consider Shelley’s Frankenstein as the first pure work of science-fiction, with a central narrative driven a character’s exploration of a world beyond what we already know. Not only is it significant for its later influence on culture, but Shelley’s work, initially published anonymously, is astonishing in both its emotional vitality and its philosophical implications. It’s a work where we both feel the anguish of the misunderstood, while also reckoning with the concept of man’s unbridled power.

The 25 best books by women

Beloved – Toni Morrison

Beloved takes its inspiration from the true story of Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery in Kentucky in 1856 and fled to Ohio, a free state. However, the story itself focuses on a protagonist named Sethe, a former slave, whose home is haunted by a malevolent presence that she believes is her eldest daughter. It’s through this vivid sense of magical realism that Morrison can confront the unfathomable trauma that slavery has inflicted on the African-American collective memory.

The 25 best books by women

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

Although the book has received increased attention thanks to Hulu’s critically acclaimed TV adaptation, it’s all thanks to the fierceness of Atwood’s critical analysis of gender politics. Her 1985 book, which imagines a near-future New England controlled by a totalitarian state, in which women are completely subjugated to men, has only become increasingly relevant – and prescient. Her work provides a continued reminder that it doesn’t take much for our world to slip into complete dystopia.

The 25 best books by women

Middlemarch - George Eliot

Mary Anne Evans, amongst other concerns, feared that her work, Middlemarch, would be dismissed entirely due to the notion that women’s writing was strictly light and romantic. And so, instead, it was published in eight instalments across 1871 and 1872 under the name George Eliot. The book is far from light; set in the fictitious Midlands town of Middlemarch, it follows a vast, sweeping narrative that encompasses subjects of religion, idealism, and political reform.

The 25 best books by women

Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng

Ng writes about American suburbia with an astounding clarity, perhaps partially because she considers the act of writing about one’s hometown as a little like “writing about a relative”, with an attachment that perceives both their greatest attributes and their flaws. Little Fires Everywhere is her second novel to take place in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where she grew up, and focuses on a new arrival to the town, who sense of mystery disrupts its residents’s obsession with structure and rules.

The 25 best books by women

The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

Famous for its popularity with teenage girls, Plath’s work speaks to clearly to an adolescent precisely because it makes no attempt to sugar-coat the prospect of the entrance into adulthood. The book’s protagonist, Esther, a young woman attempting to establish herself in New York, feels more like a front for Plath to discuss her own experiences of struggling with mental health, especially in the context of the 1950s, when women’s concerns were so rarely paid attention to. There is an honesty to Esther’s frustration that has been a comfort to many.

The 25 best books by women

My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante

My Brilliant Friend is only one part of Ferrante’s four-book series, known as the Neapolitan Novels. As the first chapter, it is, de facto, the most well known of the series, but it’s also an invitation to such raw intimacy that readers will be unable to resist delving into the rest. Ferrante serves as a pseudonym, allowing the books to illuminate with candor the friendship between two women, born in Naples in 1944, who try to find peace in a world of violence and misogyny.

The 25 best books by women

The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton captures with vigour both the opulence and the suffocating claustrophobia of New York’s Gilded Age, as two future newlyweds – in every other way society’s perfect vision of man and woman – find their union disrupted by the arrival of a cousin shrouded in scandal. The Age of Innocence is a wistful, romantic novel that still succeeds in treating society’s hypocrisy with an acute sense of disdain.

The 25 best books by women

The Color Purple – Alice Walker

Marking a rare mastery of the epistolary novel, The Color Purple focuses on the experiences of black women living in the US South during the 1930s. Although it deals with themes of abuse and violence, the honesty in Walker’s voice is disarming in a way that opens us up to her protagonist’s journey towards self-realisation and personal freedom. It’s no wonder that the book’s continued relevance saw it both adapted into 1985 film, directed by Steven Spielberg, and a Broadway musical.

The 25 best books by women

Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier

Rebecca remains one the finest examples of Gothic literature, despite the fact that du Maurier wasn’t writing within the confines of some drafty Victorian castle; rather, she was examining the world of spirits during the interwar period. In its story of a woman whose whirlwind courtship with a widower turns sour when she becomes haunted by the lingering presence of her husband’s first wife, Rebecca is a book filled with suppressed desires, loss, and a looming sense of threat.

The 25 best books by women

The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

As Roy’s debut novel, it’s an extraordinary first outing. Roy contrasts the innocence of childhood, as seen in the book’s protagonists, fraternal twins Rahel and Estha, with the rising political turmoil in Kerala during 1969. It also features a non-sequential approach to narrative, with the novel intricately weaving between the twins’s reunion in 1993 and the lengthy flashback and sidetracks, all painted with a massive sense of scope and imagination.

The 25 best books by women

Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie

We may know every twist and turn of Christie’s best works by now, but there’s still a frisson to how intricately and confidently she pulls the rug from underneath readers. Murder on the Orient Express still feels like her most enthralling work, as famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot finds himself in the midst of a murder scene, after his train is blocked by the heavy snowfall and a passenger is found dead, making the rest of those on board all instant suspects.

The 25 best books by women

The Tale of Genji – Murasaki Shikibu

The oldest book on this list, this classic of Japanese literature was written by Shikibu, a noblewoman and lady-in-waiting, in the early 11th century. Although the original manuscript no longer exists, what’s been passed down to us now was translated initially into modern Japanese, with English translations being published at a later time. An account of the life Hikaru Genji, the son of the emperor, it’s a masterful work of psychological portraiture, which offers a rare glimpse into the cultural customs of post-classical Japan.

Hoang, who has herself been diagnosed with a form of autism spectrum disorder in line with Asperger’s Syndrome (which inspired her previous novel The Kiss Quotient), accomplishes somewhat of a tour de force in making us understand – and feel – both Khai’s and Esme’s perspectives. We know what information is being misinterpreted, and why these two people, who are evidently perfect for each other, also keep misreading each other. Hoang is an avid reader of romance novels, and it shows: she delivers a classic tale of will they/ won’t they, and the expertly handled chase between the two lovers is at times heartbreaking, at times frustrating, but always delightful.

The novel is powered by several solid themes, too – not that the matters of the heart are inherently frivolous. Esme’s journey is inspired by Hoang’s mother’s own experience moving from Vietnam to America. The Bride Test is at its best when Esme tries to find her place, not just in her new country, but in the world. There is something universal in her quest, too: how can she accept herself, while also giving herself permission to build a different life? Esme must also decide how she wants to go about chasing new opportunities – and she’s far too proud, honest and capable to think a green card marriage to Khai will bring her fulfilment. “In this country of empowered people, justice, and fairness, opportunities were there for everyone,” the novel reads at one point, summarising Esme’s musings about America. “Marriage and birth couldn’t be the only ways to belong here. She didn’t believe that.”

Khai, too, brings something new to the table. His autism isn’t an obstacle, in and of itself, to his love story with Esme. Things simply have to be explained and managed. Khai, for example, has sensory issues and cannot bear light touches. Firm touches, however, are okay. He wants to be touched by Esme – that much is very clear – but must first explain to her how he can be touched, opening up the kind of realistic, profoundly human dialogue that is always needed in romance literature.

Hoang, whose career as a novelist was jump-started by a pitching contest on Twitter (through which she found her literary agent) has been movingly open about her journey as an author. With The Bride Test, she shows that she has truly found her voice – an important, entertaining, skilful voice at that.

‘The Bride Test’ is published by Atlantic Books in the UK (£7.99)

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies