From the award-winning author of Chemistry, a sharp-witted, insightful novel about a marriage as seen through the lens of two family vacations
Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,” says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign” wife.
Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?
With her “wry, wise, and simply spectacular” style (People) and “hilarious deadpan that recalls Gish Jen and Nora Ephron” (O, The Oprah Magazine), Weike Wang offers a portrait of family that is equally witty, incisive, and tender.
REVIEWS
“Wang paints an elegantly off-kilter portrait of partnership and its isolations, and of the ungainly, imperfect intimacy of family.” —The New York Times
"Blazingly insightful, Weike Wang’s Rental House is a pitch-perfect send-up of all the ways we humans can misunderstand or unintentionally (sometimes intentionally) wound our loved ones and drive each other crazy...[For] basically anyone who is breathing, Rental House is a must-read." —San Francisco Chronicle
"Wang wryly examines the nuances of class and culture, while also showing that, in the messy terrain of a family with wildly varied values and assumptions, surprising—and profound—moments of unity can still be found."—The New Yorker
PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback
Publisher: Riverhead Books
ISBN: 978-0593545553
Pages: 224
