Zuzu met her best friend Cash on the first day of college, and nothing was ever the same. Tall, witty, and popular, his friendship represented a kind of belonging for Zuzu, who had always felt like an outsider growing up biracial in her rural hometown. Though their friendship was charged with longing, it never progressed to romance. Now approaching her forties, Zuzu has built a stable life with her wife Agnes, a steadfast and career-driven lawyer. Yet Zuzu is haunted by the choices that have shaped her: living with her mother instead of her father in childhood, pursuing law over art, and marrying Agnes while harboring complex feelings for Cash. When a sudden loss pulls Zuzu back to her hometown, the 'what ifs' in her mind become louder than ever, and she begins to unwind the turns that have led her here.
One of the best things about the novel’s structure is how increasingly clear it becomes that Zuzu is not a reliable narrator of her own memories. It’s not that the events themselves are incorrect but rather her interpretations, as well as how she reads her own role ... Thomas-Kennedy trusts her readers enough to understand the dynamics at play ... Thomas-Kennedy’s debut is a marvelous study in how much desire lives in memory, in nostalgia and in fantasy. Fittingly for its themes, and for Zuzu, it’s also one of those rare contemporary novels that allows itself to remain unresolved, on a precipice of great change, its future open wide.
Sparks rekindle, and Thomas-Kennedy’s story takes off into a vividly rendered world, ringed with rue ... On the surface, the novel is cringey, in the way that perennial dissatisfaction amidst good fortune is cringey. And yet identity is so subtly mined by Thomas-Kennedy that what appears to be restlessness seems rather to be a wound that even Zuzu can’t articulate. As a portrait of a biracial, bisexual person’s discomfort in the space society allows them, the novel’s lasting effect is nuanced and thought-provoking.
Rich in Zuzu’s lifelike conversations and interiority, Thomas-Kennedy’s debut is a humbly expansive marriage story and a tale of growing older in lockstep with a version of yourself that gets to stay young.
