Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung

 

After her family moved from Hong Kong when the city became a part of China, the protagonist of this haunting story has only truly known Vancouver as home. Yet her “astronaut” father travels back and forth to Hong Kong for work, the only place he truly considers home. In crisp vignettes the narrative details the pain of rootlessness and her struggles with making peace with her father’s brand of love. Choosing just the right details to populate every page, Fung has delivered a spectacular debut. The Ghost Forest is her special painting, a metaphor for the lingering ache of regret.

Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen

 

Single women making their way in the city. A villager using technology to find a seat in the Communist Party. These (and many other) stories gloriously portray the vibrant faces of China, as economic growth delivers bewildering riches to a generation still grappling with what it all means. “It was good, she thought, to be young, to have a weekend, to be free,” Bayi, thinks, even if her work as a “Hotline Girl,” answering calls for the Government Satisfaction Office is joyless. It’s still hers. Chen is especially gifted at exploring the very essence of China, even in far-flung America. 

The Great Mistake by Jonathan Lee

 

One of New York’s great citizens, who presented the idea of Central Park, the MET, the Public Library, was gay—which was a big deal in the nineteenth century. This brilliant murder mystery + history of the city, is easily one of the year’s very best. Read it for the stunning writing, if nothing else. Policemen are “like the lightbulbs hanging in the dreary interview room—bulbous at the hips, narrow at the head, dusty, inadequate, flickering in and out of attention.” Also: “At a certain age we forget to be afraid of people. We start to dread, instead, their absence.” Mind-blowingly good.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

 

How do you explore the subtleties of race relations while delivering a compulsively readable novel with an A+ protagonist? You learn from Kiley Reid, that’s how. The central thesis of the story centers on a plot point that felt like such a remarkable coincidence that I couldn’t set it aside enough. Yet, this is sheer dynamite packaged in a fun story. 26, the age when she’ll have to have her own health insurance, looms large for Emira Tucker. Yet it is her Blackness that will be the target for people who think they know how to do right by her.