"A sharp, funny and poignant look at what it means to connect with another being, and yourself." — New York Times Book Review
"Su’s clever conceit provides a catalyst for Vi’s revelatory introspection, as she faces her self-destructive tendencies and the difficulties of being human. The result is a top-notch tale of arrested development." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A funny and pathos-ridden tale of social awkwardness and self-realization; a modern, delayed coming-of-age… This quirky, funny, pained novel considers the challenge, for any of us, of becoming fully human.”
— Shelf Awareness (starred review)
"Now this is art! This is literature! More books about women dating weird objects they found in the street, please. Blob hive rise up." — Literary Hub
"Maggie Su’s debut novel Blob: A Love Story offers unique look at humanity." — San Francisco Chronicle
"A journey of self-discovery that is as delightful and touching as it is downright strange." — Polygon
"Slyly self-aware and gently comic." — New Yorker
"Funny, tender, unexpected." — Kirkus Reviews
"Hilarious & heartbreaking." — Goodreads
"Su’s ambitions extend beyond a Chiller Theater rom-com… To say more would spoil the dark fun of this book. Suffice it to say that Blob isn’t a horror novel, and Bob isn’t the only one who evolves from a disagreeable lump into someone willing to accept who and what they are. In Su’s affecting Frankenstein story, the monster’s transformation is the least surprising one." — Washington Post
"At parts deeply intimate in the mundanity of life and surreal in its invention, Maggie Su has built an entertaining web of relationships in her debut novel Blob." — Chicago Review of Books
“A laugh-out-loud and off-the-wall story… all about finding yourself and finding love.” — Debutiful
“Built on the premise of Build-a-Bear gone funhouse mirror build-a-boyfriend, Blob really is a love story, but maybe not in the way that you expect. At the core Blob is about falling back in love with the parts of yourself that you’ve thought you lost forever.”
— The Southern Bookseller Review
“Funny, original, and charming, Blob ponders the shape-shifting potential of love."
— Interview Magazine
“So weird and wonderful! A funny, moving look at what it means to be real, to grow, and to truly connect with yourself and others.” — Read This Next
"Weird and heartfelt, this audiobook is an empathetic portrait of change.” — AudioFile Magazine
“There is so much at play in this wondrous novel. Vi, struggling to place herself in any context that makes sense within the world, earnestly leads us into a wild experiment, to turn a blob into the man of her dreams, and I was transfixed by her voice. This is a book that looks at identity and desire in profoundly interesting ways.” — Kevin Wilson, bestselling author of Now Is Not the Time to Panic
“A rollicking fun, funny, poignant coming of age story, filled with honesty and delight.” — Aimee Bender, bestselling author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
"Unique, heartfelt, and hilarious, Blob: A Love Story is a delightfully inquisitive meditation on relationships and identity. What responsibility do we have in the creation of our relationships? What do we bring and leave behind? And what repercussions exist when we force ourselves into an identity instead of nurturing our real selves? This winsome book pulls off the impossible feat of examining our deepest existential questions with equal parts tenderness and droll." — Ling Ling Huang, author of Natural Beauty
"Maggie Su has written an inventive, utterly unique debut. BLOB is not only a deliciously creepy, deeply entertaining take on modern relationships, it’s also a moving look at new adulthood, and the inherent vulnerability that comes along with figuring out exactly who you're meant to be." — Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light
"Like a beguiling literary love child of Melissa Broder and Jeff VanderMeer, Blob enthralls with raw intimacy and Frankensteinian science. This is a novel that dives headfirst into the gelatinous messiness of early adulthood—with its bad jobs, bad boyfriends, and bad decision-making—finding self-actualization along the way. Maggie Su’s debut will make you laugh, shriek, and cheer for its wayward, wobbly inventions. Blob is not to be missed!" — Allegra Hyde, author of The Last Catastrophe and Eleutheria
"In Blob: A Love Story, Su’s prose breathes magic, humor, and empathy into everything it touches. This meditation on change (and the weird, startling, and even otherworldly ways it can manifest) plunges the reader into the can’t-look-away mess of the narrator, Vi’s quarter life crisis as she navigates encounters with heartbreak, self-evolution, and alien lifeforms. You’ll want to read this in one sitting, but try to savor it: there are gems of laughter and insight to be unearthed on every page." — Renée Branum, author of Defenestrate
"Blob is absolutely charming. Maggie Su's writing is imaginative and funny. Vi is a deliciously messy narrator who will make readers laugh, yes, but also think deeply about the relationship between love and generosity. A pleasure." — Megan Giddings, author of The Women Could Fly
"Like all the best comic fiction, this delightful book is both laugh-out-loud funny and achingly poignant. I root for snarky, lonely Vi as she wrestles with the risks and rewards of embracing her entire, messy self. What happens to her might be surreal, but it has the deep resonance of truth." — Leah Stewart, author of What You Don’t Know About Charlie Outlaw
2024-10-26
Vi Liu, the daughter of a Taiwanese father and white mother, navigates relationships, identity, and her early 20s in this touching, absurd debut novel.
Reeling from the breakup of a two-year relationship with Luke Meyer, who gave her a “taste of what it felt like to be normal,” Vi is spiraling. She’s dropped out of college, missed the Peace Corps application deadline, and works at the front desk of a Holiday Inn–esque hotel. Her oft-flooding basement apartment, where she spends most of her time off, is grimy, strewn with dirty laundry and rotting leftovers. On a night out with her co-worker and her co-worker’s estranged high school friend, Vi discovers a blob next to the trash cans in the alley behind the bar. Drunk and panicking, both terrified and curious, Vi takes the blob home. Soon, to her confusion, she discovers that the blob is sentient; it breathes and eats. Increasingly, Vi realizes she can mold and shape the blob: She tells it to grow a hand, then a neck, and it does, growing into a body that looks like a handsome, generic-looking movie star. At first, Blob follows Vi’s commands, but as he becomes increasingly human, his desires shift accordingly; he feels trapped, and Vi’s plan to create her perfect boyfriend inevitably backfires. Interspersed with this comic story are vignettes of Vi’s troubled childhood—she was awkward, perpetually friendless, unlikable. These characteristics are supposed to explain why she is the way she is today: friendless, temperamental, quick to anger, a heavy drinker, sadistically self-deprecating. At times, these traits are humanizing and relatable, though they often feel too heavy-handed: “All the mistakes I made because I wanted to prove to myself what I never fully believed: that I belonged, that I was worthy.”
A funny, tender, unexpected—though somewhat flimsy—bildungsroman.