PositiveThe Rumpus... funny and surreal ... Willis embodies the ambient anxiety of lacking an explicit identity—Asian Americans take up what Cathy Park Hong calls \'apologetic space\'—which Yu gestures toward humorously in these ironic naming choices ... There’s a gentle brush of sarcasm in Yu’s portrayal of Chinatown’s ambient sights and noises, possibly a backhanded skewering of how its residents are typically depicted, nameless and generic, both noisy and easily blocked out. Other scenes are more threadbare, and take place in silence ... Tightly intertwined with poverty is sickness, a theme that Yu threads through the novel in ways that are so visceral and upsetting that I had to pause my reading at points ... I’m sad to say that the haunting, gorgeous affect of the novel’s first two-thirds transitions into a noticeably limper final act.
