Success takes many forms. For some it has to do with public service and job satisfaction. For others it’s purely about money. This novel cleverly examines what success might mean to members of an Asian migrant family in New York – a demographic with whom ‘success’ is stereotypically associated.

The death of the workaholic father is the catalyst to initiate the novel. Joan, the daughter, is an intensive care specialist in a New York hospital. She’s dedicated and her work is exemplary. She’s perennially single and her apartment is minimally furnished; her attention is solely on running the hospital ward. Her older brother, Fang is a successful businessman. He’s married and conspicuously wealthy. He badgers Joan to move into private practice, to demand a better salary and to marry and have children. Joan is more than happy to resist, doubling down by taking extra shifts during her time off. This in particular draws the ire of the hospital administration, who order Joan to take the bereavement leave specified after her father’s death.

Joan has a new neighbour. Mark, a literary editor, has moved into the apartment across the hall. He’s Joan antithesis. Do opposites attract? She’s minimalist; he’s cluttered. She prefers to be alone; he’s a social butterfly. He offloads furniture to Joan and it’s the television which makes the biggest impact. Joan had never had time to watch before. When Mark’s neighbourliness becomes too much, she decides it’s time to visit her mother who’s travelled from China to stay with Fang. The appearance of Covid – and all its negative Chinese connotations – turns the narrative again.

Joan in Okay is a magnificent story of identity and finding separate paths to belonging.

Reviewed by Bob Moore

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photograph © Beowulf Sheehan

Weike Wang is the author of CHEMISTRY (Knopf 2017) and JOAN IS OKAY (Random House 2022). She is the recipient of the 2018 Pen Hemingway, a Whiting award and a National Book Foundation 5 under 35. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares and The New Yorker, among other publications.

Weike is in the 2019 Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prizes. She earned her MFA from Boston University and her other degrees from Harvard. She currently lives in New York City and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University and Barnard College.

Instagram: @weikewang