JOAN IS OKAY, the title's a complete lie; & THREE APPLES FELL FROM THE SKY, a fairy/folk tale of the Armenian Genocide

JOAN IS OKAY
WEIKE WANG
Random House
$27.00 hardcover, available now

One of NPR's Best Books of 2022!

Funny how Life works out, isn't it? This wasn't *meant* to be a pandemic novel, says Weike Wang.

LONGLISTED for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction!


Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A witty, moving, piercingly insightful new novel about a marvelously complicated woman who can’t be anyone but herself, from the award-winning author of Chemistry

Joan is a thirtysomething ICU doctor at a busy New York City hospital. The daughter of Chinese parents who came to the United States to secure the American dream for their children, Joan is intensely devoted to her work, happily solitary, successful. She does look up sometimes and wonder where her true roots lie: at the hospital, where her white coat makes her feel needed, or with her family, who try to shape her life by their own cultural and social expectations.

Once Joan and her brother, Fang, were established in their careers, her parents moved back to China, hoping to spend the rest of their lives in their homeland. But when Joan’s father suddenly dies and her mother returns to America to reconnect with her children, a series of events sends Joan spiraling out of her comfort zone just as her hospital, her city, and the world are forced to reckon with a health crisis more devastating than anyone could have imagined.

Deceptively spare yet quietly powerful, laced with sharp humor, Joan Is Okay touches on matters that feel deeply resonant: being Chinese-American right now; working in medicine at a high-stakes time; finding one’s voice within a dominant culture; being a woman in a male-dominated workplace; and staying independent within a tight-knit family. But above all, it’s a portrait of one remarkable woman so surprising that you can’t get her out of your head.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First things first: I think Joan's neurodivergent. There. I said it.

What else is Joan? A disappointing daughter, who isn't going to give her mother the expected grands. An annoying sister, who is resolutely unimpressed with her brother's lavish getting-and-spending lifestyle. A breathtakingly good, effective ICU doctor at the outset of the Plague. A clueless, oblivious object of somewhat diffident romantic interest...utterly unrequited...for her neighbor. And most of all, most satisfyingly and unbreakably, Joan is herself.

If you don't like to read "women's fiction" because it's about men (how to catch), read this book. It's about Others (how to evade), when it's about anyone not Joan. And that was exactly why I enjoyed the read so much. Joan's struggles are typical for an atypical person, and her intelligence isn't a problem but a solution, making her an extra delightful companion for this reader. As everyone around her tries to make her feel she's missing out, lacking something, somehow wanting for something, and until she decides for herself what she thinks, she remains upset and at sea. In her enforced idleness (bereavement leave? for a father she felt little connection to still less affection for, shouting abuser that he was?) she loses the armor of being too busy to deal with all the mishegas of ordinary life.

It is great to read about the woman lead's sense of self being explored and resolved without a boyfriend at the beginning, middle, or end of the process. It is bracing to read the genuinely painful experience of the first-generation American in attempting to come to a happy resolution to a parent's desires when these are rooted in a wildly different world. But then, as the visibly different as well as culturally different as well as neurologically different (this last is not explicit in the text, but its factuality is the hill I'll die on) Joan thinks, "Why try to explain yourself to someone who had no capacity to listen?" She thinks this in a different relationship's context but the truth is, it is Joan all the way. She's not going to do the same thing a dozen...even, I suspect, a pair of...times expecting or hoping for different results. What kept me from giving it all five stars was, however, that very thing: I felt Joan was harshly judgmental from beginning to end, despite questioning herself and her responses as we went through the story. I think that's a bit unbelievable, it seemed to me she would've adjusted some of her private judgments...still, not a fatal flaw since I liked her from giddy-up to whoa.

In fact, in just over 200pp, I fell in love with Joan as she is. I think you might do the same. Give her a few of your hours. She's a good companion.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THREE APPLES FELL FROM THE SKY
NARINE ABGARYAN (tr. Lisa C. Hayden)
OneWorld Publications (non-affiliate Amazon link)
99¢ Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The Russian bestseller about love and second chances, brimming with warmth and humour

In the tiny village of Maran nestled high in the Armenian mountains, a place where dreams, curses and miracles are taken very seriously, a close-knit community bickers, gossips and laughs, untouched by the passage of time. A lifelong resident, Anatolia is happily set in her ways. Until, that is, she wakes up one day utterly convinced that she is dying. She lies down on her bed and prepares to meet her maker, but just when she thinks everything is ready, she is interrupted by a surprise visit from a neighbour with an unexpected proposal.

So begins a tale of unforeseen twists and unlikely romance that will turn Maran on its head and breathe a new lease of life into a forgotten village. Narine Abgaryan's enchanting fable is a heart-warming tale of community, courage, and the irresistible joy of everyday friendship.

THIS WAS A FREE DOWNLOAD VIA BOOKBUB. I THINK. ANYWAY, THANK YOU.

My Review: A clever little folk-tale that mimics the forms of earlier tales with modern, relatable trappings. It’s meant to be a means of processing the upheavals of Armenia as it bumpily traveled from tsars to commissars to…chaos, pure capitalism, as part of Russia then on its own with no stops at any rational place anywhere along the way. We’re not given much information but the wretchedness of the people to use as a calendar. The main event is World War I's Armenian Genocide, there was much suffering; there was much suffering throughout, but the weird thing about it is how little of it seemed to penetrate the inner lives of the characters, really better called "survivors" given how many die in the course of the story. Their village, isolated and insulated all together, goes on, despite the horrific events that unfurl between and around them.

Is that realistic? What do I, fat comfortable American that I am, know about that; I know the author chose the fairy-tale/folk-tale structure and tenor for a reason. The Armenians have a saying:

As has been established in Maran legends since time immemorial, the night will drop them to earth from the sky:
And three apples fell from heaven:
One for the storyteller,
One for the listener,
And one for the eavesdropper.

Welcome, fellow eavesdropper, to the juicy apple of Narine Abgaryan's bestselling Russian-language tale of Armenia's wild ride through the 20th century. Strap your helmet on a little tighter. You're going to meet a lot of people, and not all of them have names you'll be able to pronounce. It does not matter a whit. Love them for who they are, not how they sound in your monoglot's ear. Anatolia, the woman at the actual center of the story, is one of the world's readers-cum-librarians so she merits our rapt attention. It's not hard to give.

Little by little, thanks to intuition and innate taste, she learned to distinguish good literature from bad and fell in love with Russian and French classics, though she came to hate Count Tolstoy, unequivocally and forever, as soon as she finished Anna Karenina.

Happen I agree...but the less said of her shelving preferences the better. Her travails, those of her fellow villagers, are deeply experienced in the author's (and translator's, what a great job Lisa Hayden did on this book! I honestly forgot it was a translation most of the time, and that is meant as a compliment) open, honest, and still lyrical prose:

For eight long, unbearable years, the war reaped a harvest of restless souls around the world, but one day it sputtered out and retreated, howling and limping and licking its bloody paws.
–and–
Anatolia suddenly grasped that there was no heaven and no hell: happiness was heaven and grief was hell. And their God was everywhere, all over, not just because He was all-powerful but also because He was the unseen threads that connect them with each other.

The other feature of the prose you'll have discerned by now is the simple, direct wisdom of it. The author and translator have taken care to make sentences that sound like they've rolled around simple peoples' minds and mouths for long enough to become weighty with meaning and light of touch:

“There’s nothing more destructive than idleness,” his father had loved repeating. “Idleness and leisure deprive life of purpose.”

Vasily now understood the truth of his father’s words. Life does, indeed, lose its purpose at the very instant a person ceases bringing benefit to those around him.

Which is a truth that many of us, disabled and/or retired, learn at a very high cost in self-esteem and peace of mind. It's not, youthful imaginings to the contrary, at all fun to be idle. So what is one meant to do? Find something useful to do! Me, I write book reviews...how about you?