Review: A young couple, their parents, a ‘Rental House’ and a ‘gem’ of a novel

Hooray for Weike Wang’s little gem of a third novel, “Rental House.”

It is both contained and far-reaching, funny and serious, neat and messy, all these opposites unified by an intelligent, direct, unapologetic-yet-endearing narrative voice familiar to readers of Wang’s earlier works. Fans of her “Chemistry” and “Joan Is Okay” will also recognize her signature themes: the social and psychological pressures of parents and partners; ethnicity and culture; immigration, assimilation and class.

Wang presents her story in two parts, with a “To the Lighthouse”-esque interlude between them that moves the story forward five years. Each half is set at a vacation property visited by an interracial New York couple named Nate and Keru (”Keru, like Peru,” she always volunteers), with their dog Mantou. During their Cape Cod trip, they receive both sets of in-laws, the Chinese immigrants and the Appalachian white folks, fortunately not at the same time. In the Catskills, they meet some temporary neighbors and entertain unexpected guests.

Though emotional tensions are high, their activities are low-key: With Keru’s parents, who have post-pandemic agoraphobia, they watch real estate television shows featuring “expats.” With Nate’s parents, they build a bonfire, a skill Keru assumes to be passed down directly from Paul Bunyan.

They try to walk their dog without getting in trouble, but it isn’t easy. On the Cape, there are “numerous ‘ALL DOGS MUST BE LEASHED signs, at least one on every post and way more than she had noticed before. One sign seemed to offer a different message, so she stopped to read it. The message was: Whoever’s daughter you are, you’re not one of us. Pilgrims used to thrive here, the true settlers of America. European immigrants, Caucasian immigrants, blue-blood Americans (and the Obamas). Even your panda dog doesn’t belong here for he’s only half white.’ But the sign couldn’t have said this because the sign didn’t have text. It was simply a black silhouette of a big dog trapped in a red circle, bearing a red slash.”

Keru is clearly getting very angry, and soon she will act out. The loose cannon of the first half, she ends up taking control in an unexpected way in the second. Maybe dysfunction doesn’t always have to win, Wang suggests, and in her hands, this is a surprisingly subversive proposition.

In a charming early flashback, we see how the couple met at a Halloween party at Yale, where Nate was on full scholarship. She came as “Indecision,” in a costume of mismatched clothes, he with a foam shark fin strapped to his back. “I have no family connections or generational wealth,” she announces. “But I’m determined to build a life worth the trials it took my parents and me to get there. You with me, Nate the great white?”

He isn’t sure what she means, exactly, but he’s in. And, in “Rental House,” so are we.

Marion Winik is a Baltimore-based professor and writer.

Rental House

By: Weike Wang.

Publisher: Riverhead, 224 pages, $28.