Welcome to Litsy!

This was a cover pick but delivered so much more. A lot to unpack here. I love slice of life stories which teach me how others see and feel aspects of society. Only child and a Yale educated Chinese immigrant marries Yale educated White American from Tennessee. Very current book. It‘s a study on family dynamics, racism, behavior, maturity, white privilege, and the Chinese immigrant experience.

My third Weike Wang. I‘ll read anything she writes. I love her deadpan humor.

Really enjoyed this short, odd little novel. The cadence of the writing and how Wang writes her characters just really worked for me. Keru in particular is a fascinating protagonist. I could see this not being for everyone - not much happens - but I thought it was great.

Because suffering is required. To suffer is to strive and to set a bar so high that one never becomes complacent. To become complacent is to become lazy and to lose one‘s spirit to fight, and to lose one‘s spirit to fight is to die. So, to suffer is to live.

Eh…. Someday I‘ll learn not to go for character driven stories and stick to plot driven.

This is a difficult book to review in that its more interesting than enjoyable. Nate and Keru are a married couple vacationing in a rental house. Her parents stay for one week, his parents stay for one week. We see each person‘s complicated & barbed familial relations & how their partner is affected. Wang contrasts the families and what they strive for - as well as the couple. Can such different people respect each other, ⬇️

I seek out migrant stories but this one didn‘t work for me because of bad timing on my part. There is so much drudgery of life in this story offering little hope to contemplate, and currently, at least in my fiction, I need pieces of hope. Here I just wished this fictional couple parted ways before their Yale graduations.

Keru is Chinese American with immigrant parents. Her white husband Nate has a working class, conservative family. In Part 1, they vacation with both sets of parents in Cape Cod. In Part 2, Nate‘s brother and his girlfriend show up as they vacation in the Catskills. These occasions illustrate the vast cultural, political, and social differences between the families and raise questions about whether or not that gap can be bridged in their marriage.

My first 5-star read of 2025 🤩
Nate and Koru seemed so real. All their family drama, cultural confusion, not wanting to have kids, pressures from work/parents/siblings, and especially just tension in their marriage - all of it was well-written and intense. Not intense like yelling and fighting, but rather like getting to the real heart of a person. A deep, deep book where people are just piddling about on vacations

Liked this one a lot! Though it pleased me perfectly well as a quirky, maybe-unlikable-but-also-relatable characters + marriage/family story, I thought it was also sneakily deep in its engagement with social issues, including race, culture, and politics.

Oh, there were parts of this that hit a little too close to home... But it also gave me some interesting perspective I didn't have before, which made it a really compelling read. A great way to start 2025.

Working on the super mega crossword while watching the snow come down. Finished Rental House and really liked it- really smart observations re race,class, marriage and ambition. Wangs writing has really matured since Chemistry which I also enjoyed

I‘ve got the perfect reading spot this week in Big Sky Montana and the book is good too. Hope everyone is having a lovely holiday

I low-key loved this. She took a married couple and showed the difficulties of their relationship in two bite-sized vacations. You first join them hosting each set of parents at the Jersey Shore. Wang highlighted the difficulties with in-laws in mixed-race marriages. Several years later the couple vacations alone in the Catskills, but nosy neighbors in the next bungalow bring out tensions in their now long-distance marriage.

An interracial couple deals with her Chinese immigrant parents, his right wing parents, and everyone‘s opinion about their choice to not have kids. This felt very topical and relatable to me as a left wing childfree person in our current moment.