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FictionLiterary FictionHistorical FictionFamily SagaFamily DramaDebut Fiction

Many voices, one story

Feature by Julie Hale

Headshot, Rita Bullwinkel’s powerful debut, focuses on eight teenage boxers—all women—who are contending for a title at Bob’s Boxing Palace in Reno, Nevada. Bullwinkel skillfully shifts points of view throughout this dramatic, often funny novel, developing a unique identity and personal history for each fighter, as she recounts their boxing bouts in wonderful detail. Against the backdrop of competitive sports, Bullwinkel probes the aspirations and inspirations of an unforgettable group of young women. Their differing motivations and struggles with self-determination will stimulate lively conversation among readers.

The Family Izquierdo by Rubén Degollado chronicles the lives of members of a close-knit Mexican American clan in McAllen, Texas. The novel follows the family across three generations as they contend with a curse they believe has caused the physical decline of Papa Tavo, the head of the family, and the marriage woes of Gonzalo, the eldest son. Narrated by different members of the Izquierdo clan, the novel examines family ties and traditions as well as life on the Texas-Mexico border. Degollado creates a rich chorus of voices in this moving, compassionate novel.

Intricate and enthralling, Megha Majumdar’s A Burning takes place in Kolkata, India, following a terrorist attack. Jivan, a Muslim woman, is implicated in the attack and jailed. Lovely, a trans actress, could clear Jivan’s name, but is reluctant to speak up. Jivan’s former gym teacher, PT Sir, who has been increasingly drawn toward right-wing politics, is also involved in the case. Each character provides a different take on the events at hand, and the result is a nuanced, multilayered tale. The tough questions it raises about justice make Majumdar’s novel a rewarding choice for book clubs.

In Wandering Stars, Tommy Orange continues the mesmerizing family saga that started with his acclaimed novel There There (2018). He resumes the stories of Orvil Red Feather and Opal Viola Bear Shield in modern-day Oakland, California, while also detailing the lives of their forebears, including Jude Star, a survivor of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre. Told from the viewpoints of multiple characters, the book weaves together varied voices to create a complex narrative tapestry. Throughout the novel, Orange explores long-standing family conflicts and the enduring legacies of American Indigenous history.

Book clubs will have plenty to debate with these multiperspective and polyvocal novels.
FictionLiterary FictionFamily Drama

Dream State

Review by Alice Cary

From the very first pages of Dream State, Eric Puchner draws readers right into the seemingly charmed world of a multigenerational summer lake house in the imaginary town of Salish, Montana—a house graced with outdated carpet, board games, bric-a-brac on every windowsill, Adirondack chairs, apple orchards, raspberry bushes and cherry trees. “Fingers stained red,” Puchner writes, “bloated with fruit, you’d run across Route 35 and jump into the lake to clean off, whooping lustily at the cold, feeling like a character in a Russian novel.” The year is 2004, and the cottage belongs to the Margolis family, who are ready to celebrate the wedding of anesthesiologist Charlie Margolis and his fiancée, Cece, a medical school dropout who “was sure she had something great to offer the world, something big and pure-hearted and indispensable. If only she could figure out what it was.” 

Into this scene walks Charlie’s best friend, Garrett, an airport baggage handler who is hiding from life, tending to his dying father and struggling with the fallout from the accidental death of their mutual college friend, for which he feels responsible. This is a packed saga of the very best kind, spanning from the characters’ college days through their old age, examining a multitude of themes that include friendship, betrayal, marriage, parenting, aging—and also the road not taken, climate change and addiction. Not many authors could successfully pull off such a sprawling, multifaceted chronicle, but Puchner excels at both the big picture and the small details, creating funny, believable dialogue throughout and using characters’ expertise to enrich the plot (such as Charlie’s medical knowledge or Garrett’s later career as an environmental scientist specializing in wolverine protection). 

“If you look for a meaning, Tarkovsky once said, you’ll miss everything that happens,” a character says near the end of the novel, citing the Soviet filmmaker. Happily, however, this novel overflows with both meaning and intriguing plot, layer by layer, year by year, and even doubles back on itself in an artful way, returning to the Margolis wedding at the very end. 

Although very different books, Dream State shares remarkable similarities with Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red: They both skillfully and humorously center on a wedding and a young love triangle, a tragic accidental death, and concerns about climate change and the ways humans damage the environment. Don’t miss Dream State, whose memorable characters leave readers with plenty to contemplate about life’s most vital aspects.

Dream State is a packed saga of the very best kind, full of funny, believable dialogue and memorable characters who will leave readers with plenty to contemplate about life’s most vital aspects.
FictionPopular FictionFamily Drama

We All Live Here

Review by Arlene McKanic

Lately, a good deal of attention has been given to women who are in what’s called the “sandwich generation.” These are women who’ve taken on, or been given, the responsibility of caring for their elders even as they still have children to raise. In the case of Lila Kennedy, the protagonist of Jojo Moyes’ We All Live Here, this sandwich is a muffuletta. Everything is in it.

Lila, the British, 40ish writer of a bestselling self-help book, can’t be said to have a bad life, but when we meet her she’s having a series of bad days. Her stepfather, the overly fastidious but devoted Bill, has pretty much moved into her home. Her ex-husband, Dan, has moved out and is now shacking up with his girlfriend, Marja. Lila discovers by accident that Marja is pregnant, even though Dan said he didn’t want any more kids—at least not with Lila. The kids, by the way, are stroppy 16-year-old Celie and confident 8-year-old Violet. Truant, the dog, bites people. Lila has the feels for Jensen, Bill’s gardener. On top of all this, Lila is imposed on by Gene, her dad, a bombastic has-been American actor who abandoned her and her lovely, bubbly mother when Lila was a child. Her mother who died, hit by a bus. 

Moyes, the author of Me Before You, Someone Else’s Shoes and Paris for One, deeply understands the tribulations of women like Lila, who have a roof over their head, a garden out back that needs renovating and a bit of money even though their exes aren’t paying their fair share of child support. It’s easy to dismiss these women as privileged and clueless about what real hard times look like, but Moyes knows we all live in an entropic universe and things fall apart even in the cushiest life. It’s not a coincidence that nearly everyone in the family ends up at Violet’s school to watch a rather alternative production of Peter Pan. Growing up is not for the faint of heart, says this wise, funny and compassionate book.

Jojo Moyes, the author of We All Live Here, deeply understands the tribulations of women like Lila Kennedy, who have taken on the responsibility of caring for their elders even as they still have children to raise.
FictionLiterary FictionFamily DramaDebut Fiction

Too Soon

Review by Chika Gujarathi

Hope and laughter animate Betty Shamieh’s debut, Too Soon, which revolves around three generations impacted by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For a subject so weighty, the novel feels surprisingly effervescent thanks to the witty and resolute women who make up the three main characters—Zoya, Naya and the central protagonist, Arabella.

Stretching from 1948 to 2012, the story takes us from Jaffa to New York. We follow Zoya, a mother of nine, who is forced to abandon her seaside villa to start again as a refugee in Michigan; Naya, Zoya’s youngest daughter, who grows up in the changing Detroit of the ’60s and ’70s; and Arabella, Naya’s outspoken daughter, a Yale graduate who, at 35, has achieved a version of the American dream as a theater director in New York City. These three women, each shaped by their times, have more in common than they would like to admit.

Too Soon begins in New York in 2012 with Arabella, who has just been invited by the Royal Court Theatre of England to direct Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the West Bank. Arabella is lukewarm about the opportunity, but she decides to go for it after her grandmother Zoya sets her up with a boy named Aziz, who is volunteering as a medic on the Gaza border.

In her great-grandfather’s one-room house in Ramallah, Arabella confronts her family’s history and her place in it, while dating Aziz and directing her radical gender-swapped production of Hamlet. Dispersed among Arabella’s angsty chapters are chapters telling Zoya’s and Naya’s stories, recounting their memories of girlhood, lost love, marriage and motherhood. Together, they spin a resonating tale of hope’s potential to survive through terrible atrocity.

Shamieh is a Palestinian American writer and playwright who has written 15 plays, and is a founder of The Semitic Root, an Arab and Jewish American theater collective. In her first novel, she has crafted a page-turner that is not only funny and of its time, but also steeped in history, questioning the age-old adage that time heals all wounds.

In her first novel, playwright Betty Shamieh has crafted a page turner that is not only funny and of its time, but also steeped in history, questioning the age-old adage that time heals all wounds.
FictionLiterary FictionFamily Drama

I’ll Come to You

Review by Melissa Brown

“Despite the superficial monotony of their lives, things were changing so quickly.” Who among us—especially those with children or aging parents—can’t relate to that statement? 

Rebecca Kauffman’s I’ll Come to You follows an average family through one year (1995) and all that those 12 months bring. Corinne is pregnant with her first child, and she and her husband, Paul, are waiting expectantly for the new baby girl. Paul’s divorced mother, Ellen, is trying to find love and companionship again, and Corinne’s mother, Janet, is struggling to be honest about the cognitive decline of her husband, Bruce. Corinne’s car salesman brother, Rob, grapples with his own newly single state as he counts the days until it’s his turn for time with his twin sons. Each day presents occasions for joy or sorrow as these men and women wrestle with how life has gone and the challenge of attempting to connect with one another. 

Kauffman thoughtfully portrays family relationships in all their tension and secrets as well as all their intimacy and wonder, in an unhurried narrative similar to the introspective style of authors like Ethan Joella or Ann Napolitano. Occasionally, her characters’ interactions are rendered more stiffly than authentically. And yet, I’ll Come to You surprises with moments of poetic poignancy, like when Bruce drafts a letter to his unborn granddaughter, and captures the palpable worry that any couple experiences about their children and the future. As Paul muses during his wife’s pregnancy, “For some people happiness seemed to arrive magically and effortlessly, like a little creature that flew to perch on its host’s shoulder and devoted its entire life to singing into their ear. In other cases, a person had to work like a craftsman to build it painstakingly, tiny piece by tiny piece, and then to protect it from predators of every size and form.” 

As the seasons change, defining moments from each character’s past take on new significance. The many facets of family vacations, Christmases, late nights in a hospital and any time of day with a newborn are all tangibly displayed in Kauffman’s precise and descriptive prose. 

Rebecca Kauffman’s thoughtful portrayal of family relationships in all their tension and secrets as well as intimacy and wonder in I’ll Come to You resembles the introspective style of authors like Ethan Joella or Ann Napolitano.
FictionLiterary FictionFamily Drama

Seeking common ground, from Cape Cod to the Catskills

Interview by Sarah McCraw Crow

In her third novel, Weike Wang follows married couple Keru and Nate on two vacations: the first on Cape Cod, the second five years later, in the Catskills. Keru, a Chinese American woman, and Nate, a white man who grew up in Appalachia, grapple not only with the usual challenges of marriage and careers, but also with two very different sets of parental expectations and hopes. Wang shares her thoughts on parents and in-laws, bringing humor to the heavy stuff and coming of age in midlife.

 

Rental House uses Keru and Nate’s vacation time as its lens and structure, featuring a vacation that they take around age 35, during the peak of COVID-19 restrictions, and another they take around 40. During both trips, family members intrude, both invited and uninvited. Can you tell us why vacations, especially with family, make good fodder for fiction? When did you know that the novel was going to be made up almost entirely of these two vacations?

Vacations are prime moments for things to go awry. Travel is generally always stressful. Routines shift, and then there is the added pressure of having to spend “quality” time together and make “good” memories. On vacation you are not always yourself. You try to be a better version of yourself, or at least I do, but when the trip hits a snag (always happens), you and whoever you’re on this vacation with have to problem-solve together and that can be a mess.

I knew immediately the story would be a vacation. I wrote the first part with their parents as a standalone. Then I thought what would happen to this couple a few more years down the line, especially since they wouldn’t have kids. The natural transition for couples is to have kids and then to go camping or to Disneyland or on a cruise with other families with kids. I was interested in exploring the tensions of a couple who didn’t have any of that going on.

Speaking of family, many (maybe all!) married readers will relate to Keru and Nate’s bafflement at their in-laws’ contrasting family cultures. This makes for some funny scenes (like Keru’s dad gravely washing the paws of Keru and Nate’s big dog, Mantou, only minutes after arriving at their rented Cape Cod house). I suspect that you may have had similarly confusing or startling interactions in your own life—could you talk about that?

I live at the junction of two worlds. Culturally, linguistically, I’m still trying to navigate it and I have persistent cognitive dissonance from that friction. I am a realist, though. I can see clearly the gap between my parents and me, my in-laws and me, my parents and my husband, my parents and my in-laws (oh boy). But I can’t change these people—nor should I want to, really. They are a product of their circumstances and upbringing, as am I. Friction and emotional turmoil/ambivalence can make for great material. So, in that way, my families, both given and chosen, are a gift.

“I still feel guilt and grief for the person I was supposed to become. Most of this is a result of how much I love my parents and what we went through together.”

Rental House also focuses on the pressure that grown children feel as they navigate between their parents’ long-held expectations and their own needs and desires. Both Keru and Nate resist their parents’ directives, yet they also feel guilty, like they’re not measuring up. Do you think any grown child is ever free of those expectations?

No. I teach a lot of undergraduates, and they always come to me with questions about how I overcame X, Y, Z. The honest answer is that I didn’t really overcome it . . . the feelings are still there, and I imagine they always will be. Regardless of how good I feel about myself presently, I still feel guilt and grief for the person I was supposed to become. Most of this is a result of how much I love my parents and what we went through together. I often wish I could clone myself and have that clone be the one who fulfills all the expectations while I go off and do my own thing.

The novel moves back and forth between Keru’s perspective and Nate’s perspective. Which character’s voice was more fun to write?

Nate’s. A character like Keru will always be familiar to me and in that way, she is actually harder to write because I have to find ways to make her different. Nate’s perspective was just fun. I could hide a lot of myself in him without a reader later asking me, “How much of Nate is yourself?” as many readers will assume that Keru is just me (She is not!).

Mantou, the dog, is a wonderful character, both a shared project for Keru and Nate and a beloved family member. Tell us about the dog or dogs in your own life!

My current dog is my first and he has been a joy. Every morning, we walk to Central Park to see other dogs. We bond with couples who have dogs and my social media is populated with cute images/videos of dogs. I wouldn’t say he’s my pseudo-child, though. For one, I don’t have to educate him or teach him morals, and if all goes as planned, I will outlive him =(. But my dog has helped me in so many ways. He is my companion and friend, my reason to go outside, to stay inside and have a conversation with myself (hoping he will respond). Sometimes I will read in a chair because I know he will come cuddle with me. He is the best.

“I wouldn’t have survived my childhood without humor.”

As an undergraduate, you studied fiction with Amy Hempel, and there’s an echo of Hempel in your writing, with its mix of humor and bleakness. How do you bring humor into scenes that could otherwise be heavy? 

Humor is my coping mechanism. Even in conversation, when I think the topic is heading for a deep dive, I’ll make a joke. I wouldn’t have survived my childhood without humor. Chinese people, or at least the ones I grew up around, are quite sardonic. Wit is so much a part of the language and culture. Trading barbs, zingers, one-upping each other, not getting too sentimental about anything, and being blunt, sometimes to a fault. I hate it and I love it. Maybe I love to hate it. But I have all of that in me.

You were working on two graduate degrees (a doctorate in public health at Harvard and an MFA in fiction at Boston University) when you wrote your first novel, Chemistry. That must have made for an intense writing process. You’ve since published two more novels. How has your process changed since then?

Not much, actually. People always ask me, “Do you write full time?” I don’t know any writer who does. Even if I tried, I couldn’t. Sit at my desk from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and just write? I couldn’t. I have always needed other avenues to occupy my mind. My brain thrives on intensity. I don’t (can’t) write every day. So when I’m not writing, I teach a lot, at different colleges. I still tutor. I study languages. Recently, I started playing piano.

You now teach writing to undergraduates. How do you balance helping students improve their craft while not discouraging them? Can you still see yourself in these newbie writers?

I don’t discourage any of them. Publishing is such a grind that if any of these kids ever become a writer, there will be plenty of things out in the “real world” to discourage them. In class, I do focus on craft and being a good reader, a good observer, but as a writing instructor, I am a softie. I try to give and spread love, and above all I just want them to show up! I can definitely see myself in new writers, not the confident ones, but the doubtful ones. I am still doubtful of the whole endeavor. You can’t think anything you write is too precious. When I teach science, I am totally different. I am harsher, more exacting, more demanding. This was how I learned science, and there are just certain things you need to know in STEM to be a doctor or to do basic science research. It’s nonnegotiable.

I have a theory that while we’re always evolving throughout our lives, midlife is when we truly come of age. Do you think this is true for Keru and Nate?

Yes. I am loving my 30s and I think I will love my 40s too. I have a clearer sense of who I was, who I am and what I want my future to be. I am also way more open-minded now than I was in my 20s. Gosh, in my 20s, I had this checklist and a timeline and this burning drive to prove myself. The drive is still there but transformed. I am nicer to myself now. I give myself some grace.

Will we see Keru and Nate again in another novel or short story, maybe on another vacation?

I’m not sure. Maybe in a short story? I do like to give characters a rest afterward. Being with me and in my head can be such a drag. Keru and Nate deserve a vacation from their creator.

Read our review of Rental House.

Author photo of Weike Wang by Amanda Petersen.

 

“Family vacation” takes on a new meaning for grown children without kids of their own—like the couple trying their best to keep both sets of in-laws happy in Weike Wang’s Rental House.
FictionLiterary FictionFamily Drama

Rental House

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Weike Wang’s first novel, Chemistry, followed a struggling 20-something doctoral student; her second, Joan Is Okay, depicted a lonely 30-something scientist. Rental House, Wang’s ode to marriage and early midlife, expands the view to two main characters: Keru and Nate, who are 35, and five years married.

As Rental House opens, Keru, Nate and their sheepdog Mantou have begun a monthlong stay in a rental on Cape Cod; they’ve invited both sets of parents to visit, though not at the same time. Chinese-American Keru is concerned about her parents’ rigid standards of safety and cleanliness; and the Appalachian-born Nate worries about his parents’ xenophobia and racism. Nate and Keru are both bemused and aggravated by their parents’ expectations for the vacation, and by their in-laws’ beliefs about work, marriage and family.

The novel then zooms forward five years to another rented house in another vacation spot, an interlude that’s soon interrupted by odd new acquaintances, along with other family members. Nate and Keru are now 40, their relationship with each other both steady and fraught, and their relationships with some of their family fractured. But if this vacation leads to a breakdown, it also leads to a new beginning for Keru and Nate, and a bold step into the future.

Wang brings a dry humor to the narrative, which moves seamlessly between Nate’s and Keru’s perspectives as the two try to balance the mix of emotions they feel about their parents—love, ambivalence, guilt and embarrassment. Wang is especially good with dialogue, most notably in scenes with in-laws (and in each character’s remembered dialogue with parents), scenes that made me laugh out loud. And though the novel might be called quiet, Wang threads elements of surprise throughout, with unexpected actions from Keru, Nate and other characters that move the story forward.

Rental House is brief, only around 200 pages, and Wang’s writing tends toward the spare. But within this short space, the novel reports on a host of issues: the mingled comfort and uncertainty of marriage in midlife, the intricacies of class and culture differences, how one generation’s attempt to make a better life for their children can both inspire and infuriate the next generation, and what grown children and aging parents owe one another.

Read our Q&A with Weike Wang about Rental House.

Weike Wang’s excellent dialogue, especially in scenes with in-laws, will make you laugh out loud as her third novel, Rental House, examines what grown children and aging parents owe one another.
FictionPopular FictionFamily DramaDebut Fiction

The Magnificent Ruins

Review by Arlene McKanic

Nayantara Roy’s stunning novel The Magnificent Ruins caused this reviewer to think of two things. The first was my admittedly American view of India as huge, colorful, crowded, astonishingly beautiful and astonishingly ugly, unbearably hot or tortured by monsoons, with bitterly contentious politics, mouthwatering cuisine, a deeply entrenched caste system and a patriarchy so oppressive that it’s often fatal to girls and women. In The Magnificent Ruins, all of this turns out to be true.

As the novel went on, the second thing I thought of was Eminem’s song “Kim,” where he fantasizes about murdering his wife and stashing her body in the trunk of his car. This is because the Lahiris, the family at the heart of the book, are nearly that unhinged in the way they treat one another.

The book is mostly narrated by one of the Lahiris, Lila De. An editor in New York City, she was born in Ballygunge, Kolkata, and raised in her family’s mansion, a relic from the time of the British Empire. The Lahiris are Brahmins, and though the women in the family work, the men of the older generations do not; it’s beneath them. They live, more or less, off a dwindling trust fund. When Lila’s beloved grandfather dies, he leaves the great pile of a house—the magnificent ruins—to her. This discombobulates her already fractious relatives. Lila is not only a woman, but a young woman from America. She’s technically not even a Lahiri. When faced with a crisis rite, in this case the elaborate wedding of Lila’s cousin Biddy, things go nuclear.

Yet these people love Lila, and she loves them, and, nearly miraculously, so does the reader. It is a testament to Roy’s discernment and empathy that we never break with any of the Lahiris even as they behave atrociously to each other. Many of us know families like this. Indeed, some of us come from families like this, where white-hot hate, resentment and violence mingle with love, loyalty and moments of tenderness. Lila, too, shares her family’s talent for cruelty toward loved ones, but she’s American enough to be in therapy. A deliciously long book, The Magnificent Ruins is riveting from its first page to its last.

Read our review of the audiobook of The Magnificent Ruins.

For the Lahiris, the family at the heart of Nayantara Roy’s deliciously long The Magnificent Ruins, white-hot hate, resentment and violence mingle with love, loyalty and moments of tenderness.
FictionPopular FictionLiterary FictionFamily Drama

Tackle complicated mother-daughter stories with your book club

Feature by Julie Hale

Diane Marie Brown’s Black Candle Women tells the story of three fierce Black women united by the spells and elixirs that have been passed down in their family. Willow, Augusta and Victoria Montrose lead a quiet existence in California until Victoria’s teenage daughter, Nickie, becomes involved with Felix. Unaware of the family curse—that anyone a Montrose woman falls in love with is doomed to die—Nickie risks everything for her new relationship. Richly atmospheric, Brown’s moody, magical novel is a profound exploration of family, legacy and love.

In Thao Thai’s Banyan Moon, Vietnamese American artist Ann Tran struggles with the loss of her grandmother, Minh. After unexpected events jeopardize her romance with Noah, a professor, Ann goes to Florida for a difficult reunion with her mother. As they work to heal their frayed relationship, they learn that Minh has bequeathed them Banyan House, their old family home—an inheritance that may help them find a way forward. Thai’s poignant portrayal of three women connected by the bonds of family offers many discussion topics, including the immigrant experience and the nature of grief.

Hula, Jasmin ‘Iolani Hakes’ moving multigenerational novel, takes place in Hilo, Hawaii. Hi’i Naupaka has a deep interest in hula and hopes to win the Miss Aloha Hula contest, a competition her mother triumphed in years ago. But painful questions haunt Hi’i. She doesn’t know who her father is, and her grandmother—a formidable figure in the community—has nothing to do with her. When the truth about her parentage comes to light, Hi’i’s world is turned upside down. Hakes uses elements of Hawaiian history and culture to create a transportive tale of family and community.

With Burnt Sugar, Avni Doshi probes the complexity of the mother-daughter tie. In Pune, India, newly married Antara is disturbed by the behavior of her mother, Tara, who seems to be suffering from dementia. A headstrong, free-spirited woman who walked out on her marriage, Tara was a less than ideal mother throughout Antara’s childhood. Now she and Antara must come to terms with the past as they face an uncertain future. With themes of memory, forgiveness and aging, Doshi’s multilayered novel is a rewarding reading group pick.

Four powerful novels chronicle the drama and intensity of mother-daughter relationships.
FictionLiterary FictionFamily Drama

The Alternatives

Review by Freya Sachs

Caoilinn Hughes’ third novel, The Alternatives, follows four sisters, all doctors of various sorts. When one of the four goes missing, the others set out across the Irish countryside to find her.

With the COVID-19 pandemic and general global instability in the background, the Flattery sisters have a lot to navigate. Haunted by their childhood and the early death of their parents, they all feel isolated and alone, each finding her way in the world as a single woman in her 30s. When the oldest sister, Olwen, goes missing, the other three come together on a quest to find her. In the process, they discover more of who they are, the values they share and how they can connect.

While all four sisters are concerned with the future of the Earth, each has her own particular sphere of expertise: cooking, philosophy, geology and politics. They also share a concern about the patterns within their family history. Each sister’s voice is clear, purposeful, realistic and hopeful. When the sisters come together, The Alternatives becomes even more engaging as their stories overlap, growing increasingly complex and intertwined.

The prose is strong, with narrative shifts that allow the reader both internal and external access to these women and their concerns. A true strength of the novel is the way Hughes balances ordinary details with those that surprise and raise the stakes, keeping the reader hooked.

In Caoilinn Hughes’ The Alternatives, the Flattery sisters have a lot to navigate. When the oldest, Olwen, goes missing, the other three come together on a quest to find her.
FictionSpeculative FictionLiterary FictionFamily Drama

Shanghailanders

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

It’s 2040 and Leo Yang has just left his wife, Eko, at the Shanghai airport with their two oldest daughters. The girls are returning to school in Boston, but they’re confident travelers. This route isn’t new to them. This time, though, Eko insisted on accompanying them on the journey halfway around the world. Leo can’t understand why. “What was she hiding, then, the true motivation for going away?” he wonders. “She was always dancing around the truth, yet Leo would fish it out, dig it up from deep below.”

In Shanghailanders, debut novelist Juli Min methodically unspools the strands of the Yang family story, beginning with Leo’s questions about Eko. Each family member has their own secrets, moments that define who they’ve become. Geography influences the characters, and Min explores their Pan-Asian identities. Eko is of Japanese descent but was raised in France. Leo is Chinese. As the story expands their backgrounds, their cultural differences and values become visible.

With each chapter, Min shifts to another character’s perspective and moves backward in time. Readers see Leo and Eko’s perspectives, which are the heart of the story. But they also meet the three Yang daughters and tertiary characters important to the family. The ways that the girls view their parents don’t always align with how their parents see themselves. Still, this is really a story about Eko and Leo. The tension in their relationship that’s evident as Eko accompanies her daughters to America, several decades into their marriage, has its roots in the couple’s early days together. 

As she crafts a journey that stretches from 2040 back to 2014, Min shows us the breadth of Leo and Eko’s relationship and many of its defining moments. The chapters of Shanghailanders appear akin to short stories. Each offers a glimpse into a key moment, such as a special understanding between father and daughter, or mom’s overspending tendencies. Taken together, these vignettes become a portrait of a marriage. Min deftly deploys this atypical structure to reveal how many small moments and secrets can shape who a couple—and a family—become. 

As she crafts a journey that stretches from 2040 back to 2014, debut novelist Juli Min reveals how many small moments and secrets can shape who a couple—and a family—become.
FictionLiterary FictionFamily Drama

The Limits

Review by Freya Sachs

Pia’s divorced parents live disparate lives: Her mother is a marine biologist, diving to explore coastal reefs and track the impact of humans on the oceans of French Polynesia; her father is a New York City doctor with a large apartment in Manhattan, caring for patients in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. He has just gotten remarried to Kate, a teacher who finds herself confounded by remote teaching. When Pia returns to live with her father in Manhattan, she has a new relationship to build with Kate, even while she carries a secret with her from her time in Tahiti with her mother.

At each turn, the characters in Nell Freudenberger’s The Limits discover themselves to be connected more complexly than they knew. From New York City to a Zoom screen, from a hospital full of early COVID-19 cases to an island off the coast of Tahiti, Freudenberger brings the anxieties and challenges of the early pandemic days to vivid, engaging life.

The characters have full and fascinating inner lives, and real concerns—parenthood, a spreading virus, preserving the natural world—that layer with their interpersonal conflicts. Each chapter shifts our focus, holding our attention on one place and perspective before turning to reveal relationships from a new angle. The novel addresses race, class, education and access without coming off as heavy-handed; it feels reflective of how circumstance determines our real-world choices.

One of the unique strengths of Freudenberger’s writing is how she integrates science—as she did with physics in 2019’s Lost and Wanted—in engaging, relevant ways. In The Limits, Freudenberger deftly employs the questions posed by climate change, seafloor mining and the struggle of modern medicine in the face of the unknown to shape the story.

One of the unique strengths of Nell Freudenberger’s writing is how she integrates science in engaging, relevant ways, from the questions posed by climate change to seafloor mining to the struggle of modern medicine in the face of the unknown.
FictionPopular FictionFamily Drama

Relative Strangers

Review by Sydney Hankin

There’s much to love in this heartwarming reimagining of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility: a wonderfully diverse ensemble of protagonists, a picturesque setting and lots and lots of baked goods. Author A.H. Kim’s second novel, Relative Strangers, is a refreshing story of two middle-aged sisters relearning how to navigate their lives together.

When former restaurateur Amelia Bae-Wood returns to her California hometown, she finds that her mother, Tabitha, has been forced out of the family home after her husband’s death; a legal dispute, initiated by an apparent stranger, has gone south. She follows a note on the door to the Master’s Cottage at the nearby Arcadia Cancer Retreat Center, where she is warmly embraced by Tabitha and her sister Eleanor. Over the span of a year, Amelia’s sense of self will be tested as she resets from the hectic lifestyle she left behind. Her transformation lends the novel a coming-of-age feel that blends smoothly with its natural comedy, romance and drama.

Amelia’s relatives are the standout characters: her niece Maggie’s up-and-down college search, Eleanor’s inspiring but overwhelming daily workload, and Tabitha’s perseverance amid grief pop out of the page with authenticity. As the Bae-Wood women continue the legal fight for their family home, they simultaneously immerse themselves in daily life at the cancer retreat center, a setting that soon becomes beautifully sentimental, if a bit unsubtle. As they fall in and out of love and friendship with the employees and guests at the center, we learn the secrets of many side characters in secondary narratives that Kim develops just enough to build up the world while preserving the lightness of the read.

Relative Strangers’ Eleanor and Amelia take on the logically and emotionally driven associations of their respective counterparts Elinor and Marianne, and Kim’s novel may resonate more with those who have read Austen’s work. However, Relative Strangers is still easily engaging in its own right: an innovative, fast-paced novel that retains the comforting and delightful feel of a classic.

A.H. Kim’s heartwarming reimagining of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is easily engaging in its own right: an innovative, fast-paced novel that retains the comforting and delightful feel of a classic.

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