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A review by brice_mo
How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster by Muriel Leung
4.25
Thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton for the ARC!
Muriel Leung’s How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster is a delightful, woozily off-kilter kaleidoscope of a story—a world where the world has ended, people are dying, and we’re all still just killing time.
In Unnameable Disaster, Leung depicts the way ongoing crisis quickly becomes mundane once the novelty’s worn off—when California’s collapse is notable because it means “they had to retabulate zip codes. People mutate and change, but even the most absurd circumstance becomes humdrum when it’s the only reality. The book, like its crisis-inducing rain, is a little too acidic to be whimsical, but there’s still an odd charm that pulses throughout it. The novel’s title comes from a call-in radio show that a character starts, which feels impossibly quaint until one recalls the many comparable forms of connection that emerged in the early 2020s.
Each chapter follows a different character, but they are united in becoming more fully themselves once they move past who they were before their afterlives. There are echoes of all the ugly ways grief changed us at the start of the decade, but Leung cleverly depicts these changes physically—one character is headless and called “Sad,” as if that is the one truth about him that survives. Whether they are ghosts—oh yes, there are many ghosts in this book—or simply left behind in the wake of the world, the characters must accept that they are useless and loved, and readers must accept them. We must ask the same question the characters implicitly wrestle with—what is found in loss?
Explicitly, character wrestle with other questions, like “Should I continue to date a ghost?” or “What if my child is born with tentacles?”
It’s probably obvious at this point, but the quirk’s really putting in the work, and I suspect it will be occasionally—maybe frequently—too random for many readers. Certain absurd images are impossible to parse and must be accepted emotionally instead of analyzed rationally. Even so, I found myself giggling at how ambitiously wacky a few moments are. That might sound like a knock on the book, but it’s not—this is just a novel that asks you to accept a detailed love story between two roaches, and its goofiness adds depth to its earnestness. Leung demonstrates an incredible sense of tone to pull off the emotional turns of Unnameable Disaster, and I found myself in awe of her craft.
As much as I would like to say more about some of the book’s specifics, it feels like it would do a disservice to all of the wonderful surprises Muriel Leung has in store for readers, particularly an exceptional, emotional final chapter. Suffice it to say, if you choose to read How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster, you can expect a wonderful celebration of love in all of its joyful clumsiness and multiplicity.
Muriel Leung’s How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster is a delightful, woozily off-kilter kaleidoscope of a story—a world where the world has ended, people are dying, and we’re all still just killing time.
In Unnameable Disaster, Leung depicts the way ongoing crisis quickly becomes mundane once the novelty’s worn off—when California’s collapse is notable because it means “they had to retabulate zip codes. People mutate and change, but even the most absurd circumstance becomes humdrum when it’s the only reality. The book, like its crisis-inducing rain, is a little too acidic to be whimsical, but there’s still an odd charm that pulses throughout it. The novel’s title comes from a call-in radio show that a character starts, which feels impossibly quaint until one recalls the many comparable forms of connection that emerged in the early 2020s.
Each chapter follows a different character, but they are united in becoming more fully themselves once they move past who they were before their afterlives. There are echoes of all the ugly ways grief changed us at the start of the decade, but Leung cleverly depicts these changes physically—one character is headless and called “Sad,” as if that is the one truth about him that survives. Whether they are ghosts—oh yes, there are many ghosts in this book—or simply left behind in the wake of the world, the characters must accept that they are useless and loved, and readers must accept them. We must ask the same question the characters implicitly wrestle with—what is found in loss?
Explicitly, character wrestle with other questions, like “Should I continue to date a ghost?” or “What if my child is born with tentacles?”
It’s probably obvious at this point, but the quirk’s really putting in the work, and I suspect it will be occasionally—maybe frequently—too random for many readers. Certain absurd images are impossible to parse and must be accepted emotionally instead of analyzed rationally. Even so, I found myself giggling at how ambitiously wacky a few moments are. That might sound like a knock on the book, but it’s not—this is just a novel that asks you to accept a detailed love story between two roaches, and its goofiness adds depth to its earnestness. Leung demonstrates an incredible sense of tone to pull off the emotional turns of Unnameable Disaster, and I found myself in awe of her craft.
As much as I would like to say more about some of the book’s specifics, it feels like it would do a disservice to all of the wonderful surprises Muriel Leung has in store for readers, particularly an exceptional, emotional final chapter. Suffice it to say, if you choose to read How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster, you can expect a wonderful celebration of love in all of its joyful clumsiness and multiplicity.