by Ling Ma
First published 2022
A woman opens her door to find another ex-boyfriend moving into her already crowded house. Every man she's ever dated lives there now, wandering her hallways like ghosts of relationships past. In another story, friends discover a drug that renders them invisible, but the high comes with a dangerous price. A third woman considers an ancient burial ritual that promises to cure any ailment. Ling Ma constructs eight scenarios where the bizarre crashes into ordinary life. Her characters navigate toxic friendships, motherhood, and the search for home while reality bends around them. A house becomes a museum of failed love. Invisibility becomes addiction. Burial becomes rebirth. These women face choices that blur the line between salvation and destruction. Ma reveals how our deepest longings for connection, healing, and belonging can lead us into territories where the miraculous and the mundane collide with devastating consequences.
Genres: fiction, short-stories, literary-fiction, contemporary
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, magical-realism
Period: 21st-Century
228 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Content warnings: mental-illness