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.
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.
The characters and themes at the center of this story don’t quite deliver ... Much of the story relies on happenstance: First, Zuzu’s father dies. Then, it just so happens that Noel, the only other biracial person Zuzu knew growing up, attended the same college she did and now lives in the apartment above her sister’s house ... Zuzu’s experience of race is regularly referenced without being fully explored, stunting an otherwise engaging throughline. Finally, a sudden repair required in Cash’s house leads his wife and daughter to leave town for the weekend. He conveniently stays behind, alone in a hotel. It’s fine, necessary even, for characters to behave badly, and for coincidence to play a part, but they should do so in interesting ways.
