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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
I was expecting a lot more about the Covid experience, but Covid didn’t even come up until the last eight of the book.
This book was okay. Ha ha.
I wanted to like it more than I did. I struggled to get into it, moving through it at a plodding pace, and then suddenly it was over and nothing had really happened.
I wanted to like it more than I did. I struggled to get into it, moving through it at a plodding pace, and then suddenly it was over and nothing had really happened.
Listened on audio. Enjoyed the mood this novel transported and thought it would go in a very different direction. It showed the obstacles female professionals face, both at work and in their private life, adding an immigrant family and everything that comes with that.
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Joan is Okay by Weike Wang is a short novel I picked up while browsing my local public library. Joan is the division chief of an ICU in an NYC hospital. The thirtysomething Chinese American woman tries to balance the needs of her patients and the needs of her family. Her father’s death makes her question the tension between the two and her own minimalist lifestyle.
Choosing between the hospital and family is a normal problem doctors have. One of the reasons why I picked up the book is because my own parents are doctors who struggle with this. However, her colleagues, relatives, neighbors, and even the doorman are more worried about are what is left of Joan’s life. This includes her lack of social life, hobbies, and apartment décor.
Her ignorance on why these things are important was endearing instead of concerning to read. With her pure dedication to her practice, she meekly dodges these disruptions to her professional life. And once Joan is forced by the hospital to have downtime, she starts to immerse herself in American pop culture. It was hilarious and ironic for her to discover Seinfeld and Friends for the first time and why they were supposed to be funny in her own Manhattan apartment.
Joan’s minimalism contrasts her brother’s lifestyle, who is living the Asian-American dream and constantly tells her to follow his lead. Fang has reached ridiculous levels of wealth with an upstate NY family compound complete with household staff and ostentatious family parties. But Joan has no interest in these things and Fang holds that against her.
Even her stream of consciousness is reserved. This makes each anecdote, no matter how small, packed with honesty, earnestness, and wit. There is no fluff in these 212 pages.
But I wish there were 20 more pages to this novel. Towards the end, Joan briskly describes the pandemic entering NYC. This was the first novel I read that references the pandemic. While it was interesting to see things unfold through her perspective, she seemed to brush past how drastic things actually were, especially as a doctor in NYC and as a Chinese-American woman. Weike Wang fumbles in tying in the deaths of thousands with Joan’s grief for her father.
Still, Joan is Okay is a refreshing and endearing short novel. It examines what modern-day loneliness looks like in different spaces - at home, with family, at work, and in being an American immigrant. And with all of this, I would say Joan seems to be doing okay.
Joan is Okay by Weike Wang is a short novel I picked up while browsing my local public library. Joan is the division chief of an ICU in an NYC hospital. The thirtysomething Chinese American woman tries to balance the needs of her patients and the needs of her family. Her father’s death makes her question the tension between the two and her own minimalist lifestyle.
Choosing between the hospital and family is a normal problem doctors have. One of the reasons why I picked up the book is because my own parents are doctors who struggle with this. However, her colleagues, relatives, neighbors, and even the doorman are more worried about are what is left of Joan’s life. This includes her lack of social life, hobbies, and apartment décor.
Her ignorance on why these things are important was endearing instead of concerning to read. With her pure dedication to her practice, she meekly dodges these disruptions to her professional life. And once Joan is forced by the hospital to have downtime, she starts to immerse herself in American pop culture. It was hilarious and ironic for her to discover Seinfeld and Friends for the first time and why they were supposed to be funny in her own Manhattan apartment.
Joan’s minimalism contrasts her brother’s lifestyle, who is living the Asian-American dream and constantly tells her to follow his lead. Fang has reached ridiculous levels of wealth with an upstate NY family compound complete with household staff and ostentatious family parties. But Joan has no interest in these things and Fang holds that against her.
Even her stream of consciousness is reserved. This makes each anecdote, no matter how small, packed with honesty, earnestness, and wit. There is no fluff in these 212 pages.
But I wish there were 20 more pages to this novel. Towards the end, Joan briskly describes the pandemic entering NYC. This was the first novel I read that references the pandemic. While it was interesting to see things unfold through her perspective, she seemed to brush past how drastic things actually were, especially as a doctor in NYC and as a Chinese-American woman. Weike Wang fumbles in tying in the deaths of thousands with Joan’s grief for her father.
Still, Joan is Okay is a refreshing and endearing short novel. It examines what modern-day loneliness looks like in different spaces - at home, with family, at work, and in being an American immigrant. And with all of this, I would say Joan seems to be doing okay.
funny
hopeful
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
First novel I have read about covid. Love the female physician precise. Joan’s social awkwardness made her feel like a caricature. Never heard of Friends? Really? Never reads books but went to Harvard? Really? The plot line about friendship with neighbor was under-developed. It was a quick and enjoyable read despite its flaws.
Parts of the writing of Joan's personality didn't make sense to me (how is it you can look at a stranger and know their precise height and weight with which to call them in your inner monologue? Felt like a gimmicky shorthand the author used to make Joan seem more robotic) but I was always on Joan's side and weirdly compelled by this story despite almost putting it down halfway through. It gets off to a somewhat slow, metronomic start that i think leans a bit too far and long into roboticizing Joan, but picks up with the conflicts in the 2nd half, which do a lot to flesh out Joan as a person. This managed to feel quiet and loud at the same time and I liked it, but when it was over I felt left a bit hanging.
A very similar vein as Wang’s PEN/Hemingway winning novel Chemistry. Joan’s dry wit and straight forward demeanor drew me in. Loved “Tickle Me ECMO.” In this short novel, Wang takes on quite a lot: parental loss, family dynamics, cultural and societal demands. Joan is quirky, smart, and relatable. I read this as part of a #bookclub organized by my local indie.
Joan is ok and this book is okay….but just barely. Maybe it was just me or my mood, but I just couldn’t get into this book. Full disclosure: I read 2/3, then skipped to the final pages, so maybe something fabulous and redeeming happened in the pages I skipped, but I doubt it.
This is yet another book written in the voice of someone on the Autism spectrum, except the story never identifies her as such, nor offers any explanation for her stunted human relations. She is simply presented as a hard-working physician who thinks of her work as a series of algorithms, lives in an empty apartment, prefers to have no interpersonal relationships, is a concrete thinker, has no hobbies or interests outside of work, and is fine with all that.
Possibly the point of this book is to present a person on the spectrum and to say it’s okay to be this way: a manifesto for Autism. And it is okay, no question. It’s just not very interesting to read about when there’s no insight, no motivation, not much action or plot.
Also, the writing was sometimes unclear. There were a few times when the writer lost me and I couldn’t tell which person was the subject of a sentence, or which person was speaking. I don’t mind having to work to read a book, but it has to have something meaningful to say. This one was just work.
This is yet another book written in the voice of someone on the Autism spectrum, except the story never identifies her as such, nor offers any explanation for her stunted human relations. She is simply presented as a hard-working physician who thinks of her work as a series of algorithms, lives in an empty apartment, prefers to have no interpersonal relationships, is a concrete thinker, has no hobbies or interests outside of work, and is fine with all that.
Possibly the point of this book is to present a person on the spectrum and to say it’s okay to be this way: a manifesto for Autism. And it is okay, no question. It’s just not very interesting to read about when there’s no insight, no motivation, not much action or plot.
Also, the writing was sometimes unclear. There were a few times when the writer lost me and I couldn’t tell which person was the subject of a sentence, or which person was speaking. I don’t mind having to work to read a book, but it has to have something meaningful to say. This one was just work.
emotional