06/01/2026
Earlier this month our staff book club dug into ‘Villian Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies’ an unusual, macabre, and provocative novel by author Lindsay Wong. We unearthed some opinions that you’ll be dying to hear!
A quick, spoiler-free synopsis: This novel follows a family of three Chinese-Canadian women, Locinda, her sister Samantha, and their grandmother Baozhai. At the opening of the book Lo has signed a contract with a company that promises to find a husband for her; the problem is that they specialize in co**se marriages, a traditional Chinese practice that brings good fortune to those unlucky enough to die single.
Why is a twenty-something woman willing to be buried alive? Why does her grandmother keep all those shoes in her house that she never wears? What was that in Samantha’s hair? This authentic, disturbing, and biting prose had some of us put the book down entirely, but for those that kept with it it (re)animated some lively discussion in our book club – read on! If you dare…
Many of our readers did agree that the beginning of the book was disorientating and a bit confusing. The mise-en-scène style throws you right in with Lo as she is going through orientation with the Joyful Coffin & Co. Matchmaking service, climbing into closed-caskets for several hours next to a recently exhumed co**se. Lindsay Wong hits you right away with the tone that will carry the book – and it was too much for some of our club.
While it served as the ‘present’ of the novel, many of us agreed that the sections of the book with the Joyful Coffin & Co. seemed to be the weaker parts. The flashbacks to Lo’s life before she agreed to be a co**se-bride are were the bulk of the story takes place, and felt stronger. The opening also drops a lot of information very quickly, and is unapologetic if much of it is unfamiliar to the audience – this is confirmed by the footnotes, written in Lo’s voice, which refuse to dilute or alter the story to help manage the readers’ expectations. These footnotes felt very like Ms. Wong’s own voice and we appreciated how raw and strong her opinion came through.
Authenticity is a very big theme of the book. Lindsay Wong’s life is mirrored in the trajectory of Locinda’s movement from Vancouver to New York, to attend graduate school and live with her grandmother in an impoverished apartment. Lo is a struggling writer seeking to find her place and worth while dealing with the pressures of her family, the alienation of being Chinese-Canadian, and being unemployed. Other major themes include the struggles of immigrants, the strained relationships between family, the resilience of women and what they have to do to survive. ‘Villain Hitting’ has us thinking of topics like human trafficking, sex-work, and how historically women and children, especially of non-white communities, were commoditized; and we haven’t even touched the mythic and supernatural elements of the book.
Overall those of us that read on until the end found this book’s darkly witty, jarringly unfamiliar, and wickedly emotional tone to be very worthy and fun.
Check out our previous staff book club picks at https://www.russellbooks.com/russell-books-staff-book-club/
