At the junction of two worlds: An interview with novelist Weike Wang

Plus three bittersweet essays about the holidays

Hi friends, and happy New Year! Today I’d like to highlight novelist Weike Wang, for whom writing is something of a second act, but one that started much earlier than most second acts do—she published her first novel while still in her twenties. Wang’s most recent novel, Rental House, published at the end of 2024, and this Q & A and review first ran in BookPage’s December 2024 issue.

Novelist Weike Wang seems to be something of an early bloomer: She wrote her first novel, Chemistry, while in the middle of a PhD. program in public health at Harvard. Chemistry follows a twentysomething chemistry grad student in Boston whose research isn’t getting the results she needs for her dissertation. Her demanding parents are disappointed, and her boyfriend Eric, who’s about to take an academic job outside of Boston, has proposed. Wang followed up Chemistry with Joan is Okay, about a young scientist getting through the pandemic, and now she’s written a third novel, Rental House. All three novels feature wry humor and close looks at the conflicts between generations, and between grown children and their immigrant parents.

In Rental House, Weike Wang follows married couple Keru and Nate on two vacations: the first on Cape Cod, the second five years later, in the Catskills. Keru, a Chinese American woman, and Nate, a white man who grew up in Appalachia, grapple not only with the usual challenges of marriage and careers, but also with two very different sets of parental expectations and hopes. Wang shares her thoughts on parents and in-laws, bringing humor to the heavy stuff and coming of age in midlife.

Rental House uses Keru and Nate’s vacation time as its lens and structure, featuring a vacation that they take around age 35, during the peak of COVID-19 restrictions, and another they take around 40. During both trips, family members intrude, both invited and uninvited. Can you tell us why vacations, especially with family, make good fodder for fiction? When did you know that the novel was going to be made up almost entirely of these two vacations?

Vacations are prime moments for things to go awry. Travel is generally always stressful. Routines shift, and then there is the added pressure of having to spend “quality” time together and make “good” memories. On vacation you are not always yourself. You try to be a better version of yourself, or at least I do, but when the trip hits a snag (always happens), you and whoever you’re on this vacation with have to problem-solve together and that can be a mess.

I knew immediately the story would be a vacation. I wrote the first part with their parents as a standalone. Then I thought what would happen to this couple a few more years down the line, especially since they wouldn’t have kids. The natural transition for couples is to have kids and then to go camping or to Disneyland or on a cruise with other families with kids. I was interested in exploring the tensions of a couple who didn’t have any of that going on.

Speaking of family, many (maybe all!) married readers will relate to Keru and Nate’s bafflement at their in-laws’ contrasting family cultures. This makes for some funny scenes (like Keru’s dad gravely washing the paws of Keru and Nate’s big dog, Mantou, only minutes after arriving at the rented Cape Cod house). I suspect that you may have had similarly confusing or startling interactions in your own life—could you talk about that?

I live at the junction of two worlds. Culturally, linguistically, I’m still trying to navigate it and I have persistent cognitive dissonance from that friction. I am a realist, though. I can see clearly the gap between my parents and me, my in-laws and me, my parents and my husband, my parents and my in-laws (oh boy). But I can’t change these people—nor should I want to, really. They are a product of their circumstances and upbringing, as am I. Friction and emotional turmoil/ambivalence can make for great material. So, in that way, my families, both given and chosen, are a gift.

I still feel guilt and grief for the person I was supposed to become. Most of this is a result of how much I love my parents and what we went through together.

Rental House also focuses on the pressure that grown children feel as they navigate between their parents’ long-held expectations and their own needs and desires. Both Keru and Nate resist their parents’ directives, yet they also feel guilty, like they’re not measuring up. Do you think any grown child is ever free of those expectations?

No. I teach a lot of undergraduates, and they always come to me with questions about how I overcame X, Y, Z. The honest answer is that I didn’t really overcome it . . . the feelings are still there, and I imagine they always will be. Regardless of how good I feel about myself presently, I still feel guilt and grief for the person I was supposed to become. Most of this is a result of how much I love my parents and what we went through together. I often wish I could clone myself and have that clone be the one who fulfills all the expectations while I go off and do my own thing.

The novel moves back and forth between Keru’s perspective and Nate’s perspective. Which character’s voice was more fun to write?

Nate’s. A character like Keru will always be familiar to me and in that way, she is actually harder to write because I have to find ways to make her different. Nate’s perspective was just fun. I could hide a lot of myself in him without a reader later asking me, “How much of Nate is yourself?” as many readers will assume that Keru is just me (She is not!).

Mantou, the dog, is a wonderful character, both a shared project for Keru and Nate and a beloved family member. Tell us about the dog or dogs in your own life!

My current dog is my first and he has been a joy. Every morning, we walk to Central Park to see other dogs. We bond with couples who have dogs and my social media is populated with cute images/videos of dogs. I wouldn’t say he’s my pseudo-child, though. For one, I don’t have to educate him or teach him morals, and if all goes as planned, I will outlive him =(. But my dog has helped me in so many ways. He is my companion and friend, my reason to go outside, to stay inside and have a conversation with myself (hoping he will respond). Sometimes I will read in a chair because I know he will come cuddle with me. He is the best.

As an undergraduate, you studied fiction with Amy Hempel, and there’s an echo of Hempel in your writing, with its mix of humor and bleakness. How do you bring humor into scenes that could otherwise be heavy?

Humor is my coping mechanism. Even in conversation, when I think the topic is heading for a deep dive, I’ll make a joke. I wouldn’t have survived my childhood without humor. Chinese people, or at least the ones I grew up around, are quite sardonic. Wit is so much a part of the language and culture. Trading barbs, zingers, one-upping each other, not getting too sentimental about anything, and being blunt, sometimes to a fault. I hate it and I love it. Maybe I love to hate it. But I have all of that in me.

You were working on two graduate degrees (a doctorate in public health at Harvard and an MFA in fiction at Boston University) when you wrote your first novel, Chemistry. That must have made for an intense writing process. You’ve since published two more novels. How has your process changed since then?

Not much, actually. People always ask me, “Do you write full time?” I don’t know any writer who does. Even if I tried, I couldn’t. Sit at my desk from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and just write? I couldn’t. I have always needed other avenues to occupy my mind. My brain thrives on intensity. I don’t (can’t) write every day. So when I’m not writing, I teach a lot, at different colleges. I still tutor. I study languages. Recently, I started playing piano.

I can definitely see myself in new writers, not the confident ones, but the doubtful ones. I am still doubtful of the whole endeavor.

You now teach writing to undergraduates. How do you balance helping students improve their craft while not discouraging them? Can you still see yourself in these newbie writers?

I don’t discourage any of them. Publishing is such a grind that if any of these kids ever become a writer, there will be plenty of things out in the “real world” to discourage them. In class, I do focus on craft and being a good reader, a good observer, but as a writing instructor, I am a softie. I try to give and spread love, and above all I just want them to show up! I can definitely see myself in new writers, not the confident ones, but the doubtful ones. I am still doubtful of the whole endeavor. You can’t think anything you write is too precious. When I teach science, I am totally different. I am harsher, more exacting, more demanding. This was how I learned science, and there are just certain things you need to know in STEM to be a doctor or to do basic science research. It’s nonnegotiable.

I have a theory that while we’re always evolving throughout our lives, midlife is when we truly come of age. Do you think this is true for Keru and Nate?

Yes. I am loving my 30s and I think I will love my 40s too. I have a clearer sense of who I was, who I am and what I want my future to be. I am also way more open-minded now than I was in my 20s. Gosh, in my 20s, I had this checklist and a timeline and this burning drive to prove myself. The drive is still there but transformed. I am nicer to myself now. I give myself some grace.

Will we see Keru and Nate again in another novel or short story, maybe on another vacation?

I’m not sure. Maybe in a short story? I do like to give characters a rest afterward. Being with me and in my head can be such a drag. Keru and Nate deserve a vacation from their creator.

Review of Rental House

Weike Wang’s first novel, Chemistry, followed a struggling 20-something doctoral student; her second, Joan Is Okay, depicted a lonely 30-something scientist. Rental House, Wang’s ode to marriage and early midlife, expands the view to two main characters: Keru and Nate, who are 35, and five years married.

As Rental House opens, Keru, Nate and their sheepdog Mantou have begun a monthlong stay in a rental on Cape Cod; they’ve invited both sets of parents to visit, though not at the same time. Chinese-American Keru is concerned about her parents’ rigid standards of safety and cleanliness; and the Appalachian-born Nate worries about his parents’ xenophobia and racism. Nate and Keru are both bemused and aggravated by their parents’ expectations for the vacation, and by their in-laws’ beliefs about work, marriage and family.

The novel then zooms forward five years to another rented house in another vacation spot, an interlude that’s soon interrupted by odd new acquaintances, along with other family members. Nate and Keru are now 40, their relationship with each other both steady and fraught, and their relationships with some of their family fractured. But if this vacation leads to a breakdown, it also leads to a new beginning for Keru and Nate, and a bold step into the future.

Wang brings a dry humor to the narrative, which moves seamlessly between Nate’s and Keru’s perspectives as the two try to balance the mix of emotions they feel about their parents—love, ambivalence, guilt and embarrassment. Wang is especially good with dialogue, most notably in scenes with in-laws (and in each character’s remembered dialogue with parents), scenes that made me laugh out loud. And though the novel might be called quiet, Wang threads elements of surprise throughout, with unexpected actions from Keru, Nate and other characters that move the story forward.

Rental House is brief, only around 200 pages, and Wang’s writing tends toward the spare. But within this short space, the novel reports on a host of issues: the mingled comfort and uncertainty of marriage in midlife, the intricacies of class and culture differences, how one generation’s attempt to make a better life for their children can both inspire and infuriate the next generation, and what grown children and aging parents owe one another. (From December 2024 BookPage)

Three beautiful and bittersweet essays about the holidays

Before we get too far into the New Year, I want to share three beautiful essays that really capture the dark and the light of holiday time. Read them now, or bookmark them for next year, if you, like me, feel drawn to the bittersweet side of the holidays.

Rona Maynard’s Jewish Christmas is a story from Rona’s mother’s Jewish childhood on the Canadian prairie. Rona’s mother, Fredelle Bruser Maynard, was a magazine writer and memoirist, as is Rona.

Deesha Philyaw’s 20 Christmases gets at long-held grief, complicated mother-daughter relationships, and the holidays.

And Alice Elliott Dark’s Christmas, of Grave and Gravy, examines the relationship of Christmas and death through two classics, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Joyce’s The Dead.

Let me know if you’ve read these essays, or if you’ve read other works that evoke that holiday-time bittersweetness and even darkness.

Until next time! I’ll leave you with this week’s views: of a gorgeous Botticelli in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (look at those translucent halos, and all the blues) and the Gardner’s four-story courtyard dressed up in red and green for the holidays. As always, thank you for reading An Unfinished Story!

Sandro Botticelli, Virgin and Child with an Angel, 1470-1474. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

The four-story covered courtyard at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, a Venetian style palazzo in the the middle of Boston. The flowers are changed seasonally. I made my daughters stand in one of the windows across from me so we could wave at each other, and they obliged.