GINGKO SEASON

A young woman tries to move on after a difficult breakup.

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. Politics feel inescapable even for Penelope, who thinks of herself as apolitical. Partly because of her new love interest’s interests, she volunteers with a group of activists trying to unionize the workers of a popular hotel. 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. Penelope has the added complication of confronting, for the first time as an adult, aspects of her relationship with her parents she’d rather not face. 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. Penelope loves history in general and Napoleon Bonaparte in particular, resulting in long passages related to the Napoleonic era, the history of Philadelphia, different Chinese dynasties, and more. In keeping with the tradition of coming-of-age novels, Penelope is nothing if not idiosyncratic, but the book plays it safe, focusing on small internal moments of reflection and questioning rather than conflict among characters or the consequences of actions taken or not taken.

This feels like a beautifully wrought short story extended into novel form.