Chemistry

I loved listening to Joan Is Okay in August and wanted to dig deeper into Weike Wang’s backlist. In her 2017 debut novel our narrator is a chemistry PhD student who, feeling crushed by her demanding program and exacting Chinese parents, takes a leave of absence. She hopes to use this time to figure out what she really wants to do with her life, and to examine why she can’t just say “yes” when her committed boyfriend keeps pushing the idea of marriage. This literary novel is smartly written, with tight prose and a fascinating structure that serves the story well and makes it feel memoir-esque. I thought the ending was one part abrupt and one part pure brilliance, and would LOVE to unpack it in a book club setting. (I do want to flag a quick comment about gun violence for the sensitive reader: it caught me off guard, and made me wonder if now, six years later, that topic would have been handled differently.)