Rueful and tender ... Wang is an exquisite practitioner of deadpan, and her dialogue is full of laugh-aloud zingers. But she also uses humorous insights to pierce the outer shell and plunge into themes of loneliness and despair ... Throughout Wang’s three works of fiction, one discerns the same singular wit and interrogation of mores about gender, ethnicity and income disparity. But here she is at her most poignant and penetrating.
Timely ... Though much of the present action of this funny, deceptively keen and artful novel takes place in one rental house or another, it’s a curious title for the book. The settings are too staged to feel like anything more than the luxury interiors from one of the couple’s favorite real estate shows. Since nothing is theirs, you can’t see their selves, their souls reflected in the rooms through which they move. All of this gives the book, which on its surface is so quick and legible, a quiet depth and sadness.
ith humor and insight, Wang stretches out domestic entanglements and studies cultural differences by contrasting the two sets of parents ... Wang’s concise language and sharp observations culminate in numerous humorous scenes.
Wang again considers immigrant identity, interracial relationships, socioeconomic divides, and family dysfunction. As Wang matures, so have her characters, inhabiting significantly more soulful, intimate, resonating narratives.
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 ... Wang’s writing tends toward the spare. But within this short space, the novel reports on a host of issues.
