Impressive ... A truly delightful story ... It took me a few pages to latch onto the arrhythmic, almost jazzy flow of the novel, but the stylistic turbulence is appropriate for a life so thoroughly upended ... Maggie is unfettered by allusions to current events and so comes off as almost timeless ... That perennial quality also shines through in the narrator’s determination to become 'someone who can separate her life from her family’s and still survive.' It’s maybe not the easiest or cheeriest lesson to learn, but it’s an invaluable one that Yee shares with aplomb in this heartfelt debut.
Intelligent and playful ... This tight little novel...with its resentment-tinged wit (reminiscent of Heartburn by Nora Ephron) has truth woven into every paragraph. I’d go as far as to say it’s the best divorce novel I’ve read for years.
Yee’s buzzy debut is startlingly fleet ... The narrative is made up of loosely structured prose fragments — rarely longer than a page or two — in the vein of Renata Adler and Jenny Offill ... Comic ... Yee’s prose has a meandering, conversational rhythm, and reading Maggie feels pleasurably like clicking through the back archives of a webcomic or lingering over lunch wine with an old friend ... It’s risky to design a novel featuring all these gaps, like air pockets keeping it afloat ... Gives a sense of talent kept in reserve for some other, later occasion — of an author wary of spending it all in one place. I hope Yee opens the vault. The clouds look heavy these days.
It is full of heartbreak, yet also of wit and astute observations. At only 200 pages, this is a short and cutting read ... Many of the subtle observations made in Maggie made me pause and reflect – they were so cuttingly precise, so ordinary yet things most people would never stop to consider. Despite the writing style being quite detached, it is easy to grasp a sense of the narrator’s character and still root for her. Yee so wonderfully shows that friendship is one of the greatest loves of all ... would’ve preferred this to have chapters and for the snapshots to be longer sometimes to flesh out the characters and storyline. The fragmentation meant emotion felt lacking at points too – the anger and sadness felt rather tame given her circumstances. But this is an impressive debut with so much potential in its vivid anecdotes and sharp observations – I look forward to seeing what Yee produces next.
Despite its heaviness, author Yee’s novel knows to embrace the hopeful and heartwarming, such as the protagonist’s relationship with her best friend. A beautifully crafted debut that isn’t afraid to guffaw in times of darkness.
Appealing ... Yee is an attentive storyteller, empathetic to all her characters, even Maggie. Readers drawn to nuanced domestic narratives will find much to savor.
