THE SATISFACTION CAFÉ

A Taiwanese immigrant abandons the story she thought she was meant to have and pursues a colorful, complicated life in the Bay Area.

Joan Liang is 25 on the day in 1975 that she stabs her husband and announces she’s ready for a divorce. (The stabbing is not fatal—luckily for Joan, she only had a pair of calipers on hand, and her lecherous husband mostly deserved his fate.) But this is the first time in her life Joan has stood up for herself, and Wang’s novel kicks off with the reverberations of that uncharacteristically bold action. Soon, Joan meets Bill Lauder, a wealthy white man, and becomes his fourth wife, moving into his mansion, Falling House. His chaotic family—his siblings and his children from a previous marriage—bring endless complications to Joan’s life, as does being an Asian woman in her largely white social circle. But throughout, Joan retains the steely, practical backbone she exhibited that day in 1975. She becomes a mother despite Bill’s hesitations, giving birth to a son and adopting the daughter of Bill’s wayward younger sister. Joan is also savvy in securing her financial future. When double tragedies arrive, Joan must confront what she really wants. Wang’s novel leapfrogs across time to cover Joan’s entire adult life and occasionally zooms out to tell the stories of the other characters in Joan’s orbit—her lawyer, for example, or her troubled stepson. The effect is a story that, though warm and thoughtfully told, can feel a bit structurally slack. But then again, as Joan knows, life can be like that too: “How few truly surprising, lovely moments one receives in a lifetime,” she muses.

Though the story can feel aimless at times, Wang’s novel gives us a main character to root for.