by Weike Wang (January 18, Random House)In Weike Wang’s follow-up to her PEN/Hemingway Award-winning debut novel, Chemistry, the writer has once again imagined an idiosyncratic protagonist who she then throws into crisis. This time, it’s Joan, a content 36-year-old Chinese American woman who’s dedicated to her work as an ICU doctor in Manhattan. But after the death of Joan’s father, who moved back to China after Joan and her brother became established in their careers, her mother comes to the States to reconnect with her kids, and “a series of events sends Joan spiraling.” In a novel that butts up against the early pandemic, Wang wryly crafts a story of family, otherness, and becoming.