This is a very well-crafted book. Unfortunately, I read the “praise for” section before I started reading this, and now I can’t think of anything to say other than to parrot what’s already been said. Such as, it’s a “beguiling and wistful Arab-American memoir [that] offers a poignant glimpse of the immigrant’s dueling nostalgias.” Yeah, that’s just what I would’ve said. But the St. Petersburg Times beat me to it.

“Chen shows me how to fit the chopsticks to my fumbling fingers. After a few trembling attempts, I manage to get a small piece of beef to my mouth. I close my eyes and my senses swim in my head. The flavors are so complex and capricious, I don’t know how to make sense of them. … Who would have thought to bring these ingredients, these ways of thinking about food, together in such startling ways?”

“I don’t know what my sisters and cousins and I ever talk about, I only know that we can’t stop laughing. We watch the adults eat, and we laugh some more. We’re not there for the food so much as for the pure electricity of one another’s presence: We could subsist on chewing gum and whistling and running in the fields.”

I didn’t love “Charming Billy.” It was pretty good as far as tragic, alcohol-drenched Irish family stories go, but … I don’t know. I just wasn’t all that (please forgive me for saying it) charmed by Billy, and I think that’s a pretty important part of the book.