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.
