Debut novelist Naomi Xu Elegant artfully depicts the slings and arrows of young adulthood.

On this episode of Fully Booked, Naomi Xu Elegant joins us to discuss Gingko Season (Norton, May 20), the story of a 25-year-old woman trying to find her footing—socially, politically, romantically—in modern-day Philadelphia. Kirkus calls Elegant’s heady debut “beautifully wrought.”

Elegant is a writer and journalist living in New York City. Her work has appeared in Monocle, Fortune, Atlas Obscura, Nikkei Asia, The Drift and elsewhere. She is the co-editor of the independent literary magazine Gully and writes the monthly newsletter luanqibazao.

Here’s a bit more from our review of Gingko Season:“Penelope Lin, who grew up in Beijing, loves Philadelphia, the city she calls home. She’s passionate about her job at a museum, where she gets to research foot-binding practices and handle historical relics. Some good friends from college live nearby, and she has roommates she likes as well. By chance, she meets a young man she’s drawn to, but even as their connection deepens, she pines for another chance with her ex-boyfriend. It’s the fall of 2018, two years into the first Trump administration, and the midterm elections are coming up.…Penelope and her close friends don’t always agree on politics or what they should be doing with their lives as they approach their mid-20s, but they share their points of view and grapple with choices around careers and dating.…The story is narrated by Penelope, and debut author Elegant writes long, rhythmic, fluid sentences. She and her protagonist are tuned into the five senses, making the book’s descriptive paragraphs a pleasure to read.”

Elegant and I dig into the experience of writing her first novel, how she developed Penelope’s voice, and why she chose to endow her protagonist’s best friends with big personalities. She talks about drawing inspiration from personal experience, as well as from research—including a college course in which she and her fellow students visited the Penn Museum and handled Qing Dynasty artifacts. We discuss Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust, Liang Sicheng, Lin Huiyin, and Elegant’s abiding love of Philadelphia.

EDITORS’ PICKS:

Then There Was One by Wendy Cross (Puffin/Penguin Random House UK)

The Burning Season by Caroline Starr Rose (Nancy Paulsen Books)

Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane (Norton)

The Doorman by Chris Pavone (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

Chemistories by Maya Mourshed

Beyond Australia by Lee Forrest

The Three O’Clock Calls by Tom Smith

Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.