Sneha immigrated to the United States from India with her parents when she was 17, and five years later (in 2012) she is attempting to begin her life after moving to Milwaukee. She has a corporate job that pays decently (for a 22 year old recent graduate with little debt) and includes a paid-for apartment as a perk. Most of this novel is about how Sneha spends most of that first year as a young person, one with some significant personal history she hasn’t fully dealt with. Mathews is a talented writer, providing just information here and leaving out a detail there, only to revisit that in a reveal that is both subtle and profound. I was invested in Sneha’s life, even when I was frustrated with her. Her prose is sharp – but this is a later-millennial novel, the kind that doesn’t use quotation marks (you could make a lot of comparisons between this and Sally Rooney, actually). The characters use text speak regularly in conversation, and there are more bros and my dudes than I care to count.
This is a novel full of relationship angst, much more focused on characters than on any sort of plot. The characters don’t actually do much – although there is sufficient change over the course of the novel, it’s mostly a window into Sneha’s life for a certain period of time, which isn’t defined necessarily by one single problem / solution. Not to say there aren’t problems – Sneha has trouble in nearly all aspects of her life. She loves her family back in India, but she cannot bear to share with them parts of her own painful past, nor what her life is like in her present. She wants a relationship, but cannot bear to vulnerable with any of the women she sleeps with, including one whom she might actually love. She wants friendships, but she doesn’t want to be open with people about the struggles she faces. She wants to be generous, but she doesn’t want to be taken advantage of, and her personal finances are wildly unstable.
Sneha has some deeply unlikeable personality traits, and some of that was I think meant to just be part of what makes that character whole and real – but also, there’s a fine line between giving a character certain traits and writing a book that centers whiteness. I don’t know that I’m the best judge of where that line should be, but other critiques of the book have included a hefty dose of side-eye around the way that Sneha longs for and forgives white characters and critiques and rejects non-white characters. Again, I think we are SUPPOSED to judge Sneha as readers, she is definitely presented critically, and I think that it’s possible to see her within a larger conversation.
In the end, I was invested in this book, and I wanted to know what would happen to Sneha. Mathews is a very talented writer, and I can’t wait to see what else she will write. I appreciated the ways in which she presented the importance of friends and chosen family, especially to a person in their 20s. The book is full of the types of messy and confusing and exhilarating ways we experience life, both its mistakes and and promises, that is so characteristic of your 20s. She also manages to sneak in critiques of capitalism and consumer culture without turning didactic or overly political. I’d love to hear other thoughts if anyone has read this one!
