Summer’s Best Beach Reads by
The New York Times
• Books You Should Read This July by
New York
magazine • Books We’re Most Excited About by
Today
• Best Beach Reads by
Harper’s Bazaar
• Best Books of Summer by
ELLE
• Most Anticipated Books of the Summer by
Time
• Best Summer Reads by
Oprah Daily
• Books to Read this Summer by
The Washington Post
“As with Nora Ephron’s
Heartburn
...you read
Maggie
to spend time with its author.” —
A Chinese American woman spins tragedy into comedy when her life falls apart in a taut, wry debut novel, “as playful as it is profound” (Alison Espach, author of
The Wedding People
)—perfect for fans of
Joan Is Okay
and
Crying in H Mart
.
A man and a woman walk into a restaurant. The woman expects a lovely night filled with endless plates of samosas. Instead, she finds out her husband is having an affair with a woman named Maggie.
A short while after, her chest starts to ache. She walks into an examination room, where she finds out the pain in her breast isn’t just heartbreak—it’s cancer. She decides to call the tumor Maggie.
Unfolding in fragments over the course of the ensuing months,
Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar
follows the narrator as she embarks on a journey of grief, healing, and reclamation. She starts talking to Maggie (the tumor), getting acquainted with her body’s new inhabitant. She overgenerously creates a “Guide to My Husband: A User’s Manual” for Maggie (the other woman), hoping to ease the process of discovering her ex-husband’s whims and quirks. She turns her children’s bedtime stories into retellings of Chinese folklore passed down by her own mother, in an attempt to make them fall in love with their shared culture—and to maybe save herself in the process.
In the style of Jenny Offill and the tradition of Nora Ephron’s hilarious and devastating writing on heartbreak and womanhood,
is a master class in transforming personal tragedy into a form of defiant comedy.