Title: The Majesties Author: Tiffany Tsao
Published: July 2, 2018
Genre(s): Literary Fiction
Page Count: 257
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Gwendolyn and Estella have always been as close as sisters can be. Growing up in a wealthy, eminent, and sometimes deceitful family, they’ve relied on each other for support and confidence. But now Gwendolyn is lying in a coma, the sole survivor of Estella’s poisoning of their whole clan.
As Gwendolyn struggles to regain consciousness, she desperately retraces her memories, trying to uncover the moment that led to this shocking and brutal act. Was it their aunt’s mysterious death at sea? Estella’s unhappy marriage to a dangerously brutish man? Or were the shifting loyalties and unspoken resentments at the heart of their opulent world too much to bear? Can Gwendolyn, at last, confront the carefully buried mysteries in their family’s past and the truth about who she and her sister really are?
During its initial release in 2018, Tiffany Tsao’s The Majesties was frequently comped with Crazy Rich Asians—an unfortunate contrast that doesn’t work at all. The fact that both novels feature fabulously wealthy ethnic Chinese families in Southeast Asia (Singapore or Indonesia) is the only similarity between them. Where Crazy Rich Asians is a glitzy contemporary fiction title, The Majesties is an attempt at a slow-paced, introspective literary mystery.
The Majesties is an interesting suspense novel because the question is less “who done it?” and more “why done it?” The first pages of the book are quite unambiguous: at a reception in honor of her grandfather’s birthday, Estella poisoned the food, thereby killing more than 300 people. Only Estella younger sister, Gwendolyn, survived the mass poisoning. This story, then, is narrated in a somewhat meandering fashion by Gwendolyn as she lies comatose in her hospital bed. Gwendolyn’s thoughts—and the reader’s—are fixated on only one thing: why did Estella do it?
As one would expect, Tsao does not give her audience the answer right away. She filters Gwendolyn’s memories carefully, curating what truths are revealed and when. Satisfactory explanations come at the end, in the form of two separate “twists” that I enjoyed very much, although I concede they were perhaps not the most skillfully written.
The central focus in The Majesties is Estella’s relationship with her former husband. With the privilege of distance (both emotional and temporal), Gwendolyn picks apart every memory as she re-creates the tragedy of her sister’s abusive marriage. I think that Tsao’s treatment of domestic abuse is well done here, and the way Estella’s situation is told from the outside looking in was helpful to readers. And retrospectively, I think the false sense of distance Gwendolyn had from Estella’s marriage is quite cleverly done, given the way the story concluded.
Walking hand-in-hand with Estella’s catastrophic marriage, but subtly, is the author’s commentary on the corruption of the hyper-rich families who feature in the story. Is there redemption for them? Can families built upon cruelty, exploitation, and criminality ever become good? In the months leading up to her act of mass-murder, Estella wishes to know if her social circle can be “fixed.” The Majesties definitively states that there is no redemption for these people—and for that reason, Estella determines they must die. Unlike other novels featuring similarly situated characters, Tsao does not show any benefits of wealth or status. In this story, there are none. As shown here, the result of it all is nothing more than family dysfunction, cycles of abuse, and—eventually—death.
Yet The Majesties is not without hope. Although the conclusion that there is no redeeming Gwendolyn’s family appears to be correct, the end of the novel signals that perhaps there can be freedom from the depravity that came from their status and wealth. Gwendolyn may not immediately understand her sister’s decision, yet neither does she disapprove of the murders. By the end of the story, she seems to find a net positive in the situation, which I think is in line with Tsao’s overall thesis regarding the characters’ family.
Ultimately, this book is a character study on one woman (Estella), and on the environment that shaped lead her to such an extreme act. It’s a contemplative story, told via the nonlinear progression of a comatose patient’s jumbled memories. I don’t think Tsao managed to accomplish as much as she wanted with The Majesties, but I like the book very much all the same. An interesting narrative and unique subject matter kept me going, and the emotional payoff in the end was satisfying.
