Review by Booklist Review
It's not like there was a single instance when Eleanor's life became unmoored; it was a creeping feeling, a gradual slide. Eleanor met her husband, Ellis, at a New Year's Eve party when they were both neuroscience grad students at Mount Sinai. They seemed to be a good match, but as Ellis churned out publications, Eleanor lost faith in her own research and left the program with a master's degree and very little idea of what to do next. This sense of unease--the ability to become absorbed by a partner's stronger personality--echoes across Elysha Chang's debut, with generations of couples falling to the same fate. The sweeping family saga splices Eleanor and Ellis' story with the history of Eleanor's parents' marriage and her childhood spent with a headstrong, difficult sister. Exploring the intersections of love and obligation, duty and commitment, the independence of new lifestyles and the appeal of old traditions, Chang's novel will appeal to fans of Helen Fisher's Faye Faraway and Tracey Lien's All That's Left Unsaid.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Chang debuts with the understated and quietly devastating story of a grieving 20-something woman. In 2013 New York City, Eleanor Liu is on track to fulfill her late mother Rita's low expectations, having dropped out of a neuroscience graduate program to work in her classmate-turned-husband's lab. But, bored and unfulfilled both matrimonially and professionally, Eleanor soon has an affair with a colleague. In the months following her mother's death, Eleanor makes increasingly risky and bizarre choices, such as spending unsanctioned time with a primate from the lab, before decamping for her childhood home in New Jersey, where she goes through Rita's belongings and begins to grasp a greater sense of her life. Eleanor's narration alternates with flashbacks to her childhood and adolescence--notably her relationship with her troubled older sister--and of her parents' emigration from Taipei in the late 1970s. The somewhat pensive tone is broken up by moments of levity, but always returns to questions of family history and the impossibility of understanding someone else's story when one's own memories are so unreliable. Chang is off to a promising start. (June)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Eleanor Liu is a "chronic avoider"--she runs from every difficulty life presents, but how long can she outrun grief? After dropping out of her Ph.D. program in neuroscience at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital, Eleanor works as a lab tech for her husband, Ellis, while continuing her personal research on the side. Penny, Eleanor's former supervisor, disapproves of the arrangement because she believes Eleanor is a good scientist who's not living up to her potential. Eleanor, however, is comfortable and thinks to herself, "Yes, I have had to face the fact that I quit. I have had to watch as my friends, now in their fourth year, settle into their labs and their research projects. But I'm not ashamed. Generally, I'm content. There's hope for quitters, too. There's a paradise on the other side of giving up." This attitude extends to all aspects of her life. After her mother's death, Eleanor's behavior becomes more erratic until she doesn't even understand her own actions--pursuing an affair with a colleague, stealing a marmoset, and abandoning her husband to return to her childhood home. Rather than confront her grief and the ways she's complicated her own life, she allows her actions to put her job and relationship in jeopardy. The book is primarily centered on Eleanor in the present day, but there are chapters that focus on her parents' relationship and the building of their business, her older sister, and the family's dynamic. These chapters enrich the characters by allowing space for their individual stories to be told and provide insight into how Eleanor's upbringing influences her present life. They also offer up the idea that her parents' experiences have had an impact on her life through the ways they inform the advice they give her. Now that her mother is gone, Eleanor--who acknowledges how much her mother's approval and disapproval influenced her choices--must consider how to live her life and make sense of it on her own. Funny, original, and overflowing with wisdom--this is an absolute delight of a debut. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
