Item: Joan Is Okay
Rating: 4.00
Author: quirkycat

by Weike Wang

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • 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

LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • “A deeply felt portrait . . . With gimlet-eyed observation laced with darkly biting wit, Weike Wang masterfully probes the existential uncertainty of being other in America.”—Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, NPR, The Washington Post, Vox

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.

Joan Is Okay is the latest novel by Weike Wang, and as her Chemistry novel is still stuck in my mind, I wanted to give this one a go. It's a contemporary fiction novel addressing complicated women.

Joan is an ICU doctor in one of the busiest cities in the world – New York City. She's struggling to define her idea of a dream and isn't entirely sure if her current career matches whatever ephemeral definition may come to mind.

Her life is thrown into chaos when every element in her life moves at once. Her father passes away, her mother leaves China for America in hopes of reconnecting with her children, and the pandemic strikes. Any one of these would have spelled a crisis for Joan, but together?

“The surgical ICU had its surgeons and anesthesiologists, doctors who wrote the shortest and most indecipherable notes. The notes reminded me of haikus, and because I wasn’t a literary person, I called my time in this unit difficult poetry.”

Joan Is Okay is a relevant and heavy-hitting novel. One that lends a voice to many people at once. Through Joan, we see the plight of medical personnel around the world. We also see more personal struggles as Joan copes with her life and family changes. It's so painfully real and beautifully human all at once.

I seem to be in an unintentional streak of reading novels pulling real-world events and elements, such as the pandemic, into their stories. It isn't surprising that this is happening, given that it is all on our mind and writing/reading is how many people process it. But it did make Joan Is Okay feel heavier at times for this reason.

Joan Is Okay is a book that truly packs a punch. It's the perfect follow-up for Chemistry, so I highly recommend it to all Weike Wang's fans – old and new.

Thanks to Random House and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Read more reviews over at Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

Joan Is Okay

by Weike Wang

Reviewed by Quirky Cat on Mar 7, 2022

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