The Wangs vs. the World by Jade Chang
The Wangs vs. The World is the most fun I've had reading a book in a long, long time. Coming from a big (and close) family myself, I'm often disappointed when books try and fail to capture that multi-sibling dynamic; Chang nails it in the story of Charles Wang, his wife, and his three kids coming to grips with the loss of the empire Charles came to the U.S. to build.
After the financial collapse of 2008, Charles — endearing, resourceful, furious — sets off on a cross-country road trip, gathering up two of his children (the style-blogger Grace who is constantly mad about being left out, the super-sensitive aspiring comedian Andrew) and taking them, with their stepmother, to the upstate New York home of his oldest daughter, the disgraced artist Saina. History has wronged him — the U.S. sold him a faulty dream; the war forced his family out of a country where he belonged — and he's determined to make his way back to China to reclaim what he considers his birthright: his pride, and his family land.
Chang proves a family doesn't need to be dysfunctional to be interesting, that genuine and fervent love among family members will make you root for their successes even more. I couldn't get enough of the Wangs. The book is done but I miss them like old friends.
Him, Me, and Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
A pregnant 18-year old in Yonkers abandoned by her parents. A queer, successful lawyer who has the bottom half of a goat. A kestrel captured and interrogated on suspicion of spying for the Israeli government. Randa Jarrar’s new short story collection, Him, Me, and Muhammad Ali, deftly uses characters of all types like these to place gender, immigration, class and Arab identity in a global conversation with each other. Jarrar’s first novel, A Map of Home, managed to talk about the trials of growing up as an Arab Muslim, third culture kid in a way that was complicated, human, and truly laugh-out-loud hilarious. This new short story collection deals with similar issues, but the format allows Jarrar to travel more quickly between the many topics she’s interested in: body image, gender, Muslim and Arab identity, immigration, domestic abuse, sex, desire, class, and pretension.
Using her efficient prose and incredible repertoire of insults and swears, Jarrar transports the reader from America to the Muslim world and back again multiple times throughout the book. It is often difficult to determine whether you should be sympathizing with Jarrar’s characters or laughing at the way she has rendered the tragic with comedy. This is especially highlighted in her more surreal takes on immigration and identity. When a half-ibex lawyer comes out to her Lebanese father as bi on the phone, he tells her “It’s not enough that you’re a halfie? You want to be half-gay and half-straight, too?” Yet Jarrar’s power is that she writes real, unpredictable characters that don’t give easy answers. She never falls into easy dichotomies of Arab against American, Western against Eastern, Muslim against not. Her characters are flawed people trying to find space in the margins. The result is a highly readable, surprising collection of stories.
The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky
In Marcy Dermansky's delightfully strange third novel The Red Car, our heroine Leah has found herself on the precipice of divorce and eager to run away from it. When her beloved former boss Judy dies, bequeathing her with a possibly haunted sporty red car, it's exactly the catalyst Leah needs to get out of her marriage and on the road. As she takes us to San Francisco and on windy highways towards the ocean, where freedom feels both fanciful and just within reach, Leah poses her own thorny, unanswerable question to the reader: Are you happy in your own life?
The characters Dermansky creates have always been richly textured and deliciously troubled (See: Bad Marie), cementing their place in the canon of female anti-heroines alongside women like Harriet from Iris Owens's brilliant 1973 novel After Claude and young Ruth from Kate Zambreno's visceral 2011 novel Green Girl. Dermansky's writing has always been both alluring and jarring, at once intimate and detached. But with Leah, she's achieved mastery by painting a portrait of a woman who's grown out of her own life. Doree Shafrir recently profiled the author for READER. Dermansky's books are not to be missed.
The Loved Ones by Sonya Chung
Sonya Chung’s stunning second novel The Loved Ones charts the unexpected ways in which families form, fracture, and rebuild. It centers on two Lee clans — alike in nothing but name — brought together by chance and bound by sudden tragedy. In the aftermath of senseless loss, why have Chong-ho and Soon-mi Lee rejected their 13-year-old daughter Hannah with such cold hostility? Can Charles and Alice Lee salvage their marriage from its tailspin? And what indelible connection continues to draw Charles to Hannah, though she’s no longer the babysitter for his children? The Loved Ones renders anguish with devastating precision — through the quiet confidence and grace of Chung's poetic prose. There's a heartfelt, heartbreaking purity to this novel unlike anything I've encountered in a long time. Read it, revel in it, and then go hold your loved ones tight.