How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster: A Novel

by Muriel Leung

Overview

A dark and tender debut set against a writhing backdrop of postapocalyptic New York City.

Acid rainstorms have transformed New York City into a toxic wasteland, cutting its remaining citizens off from one another. In one apartment building, an unlikely family of humans and ghosts survives. Mira reels from a devastating breakup with her partner, Mal, whose whereabouts are unknown, while her mother is plagued by furious dreams and her grandfather, Grandpa Why, stakes his claims as a rambunctious ghost. Across the hall, the cockroach Shin, also a ghost. As the world around them worsens, each character must learn to redefine what it means to live, die, and love at the end of the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324076186
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/22/2024
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Muriel Leung is the prize-winning author of three poetry collections and teaches critical studies and creative writing at the California Institute of the Arts. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

Editorial Reviews

"A moving exploration of grief and survival."— People

"Muriel Leung gives us such elegance and tenderness and visions of loss and connection inside this broken world."— Aimee Bender, author of The Butterfly Lampshade

"An astonishing feat of the imagination and the human heart, this book is a one-of-a-kind experience. A haunting and exquisite debut novel."— Elaine Hsieh Chou, author of Disorientation

"A singular work of fiction: joyfully grotesque and ridiculously sexy. Muriel Leung’s characters—ghosts, vermin, apocalypse survivors all—made me laugh out loud as often as they broke my heart. I loved it all, every single word."— Jean Chen Ho, author of Fiona and Jane

"Muriel Leung builds a hypnotic world where the real and the spectral are layered like watercolors. To read this book is to be heartbroken, haunted, and, ultimately, healed."— Jenny Xie, author of Holding Pattern

"Astonishing . . . writhes with heartbreak and wonder. Visionary, horny, and surprising at every turn, this novel is a triumph."— Henry Hoke, author of Open Throat

"Poet Leung’s polyphonic debut novel is undoubtedly strange, infused with a ubiquitous, desperate longing for connection, suggesting that creating community might be the only antidote amidst apocalyptic collapse."— Terry Hong Booklist

"Leung’s novel strikes a satisfying chord, harmonizing joy and optimism with despair and melancholia. Surreal imagery combines with poetic prose to illustrate what life and love look like when crisis becomes commonplace and everyone is grieving—even the ghosts. At once absurd and profound."— Kirkus

"Mesmerizing… a wildly original and disorienting rumination on love amid chaos."— Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2024-07-10
Inhabitants of a New York City tenement band together to brave the “after-after.”

Earthquakes rock Manhattan, reducing the financial district to rubble. Then weekly acid rainstorms start corroding buildings, bridges, roads, and power lines. Cell towers go down, checkpoints go up, and travel between boroughs becomes difficult. Mira tries to convince her partner, Mal, to flee Queens—now an “At Risk” zone—and go stay with Mira’s mother, Ma, on the Lower East Side, but their crumbling abode was orphan Mal’s childhood home, and she can’t bring herself to leave. Heartbroken but unwilling to die for Mal’s nostalgia, Mira returns to her own childhood home: building 4B, apartment 9A of the Gratuitous Place housing projects. Mira feels lost without Mal, though, and begins hosting a ham radio show,How To Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster, in hopes that Mal will hear. Instead, Mira’s transmissions attract the romantic attentions of Sad—the headless man who lives in unit 1A. Excerpts from Mira’s broadcast pepper Leung’s ambitious debut, which unfolds via myriad perspectives and narrative fashions. From Ma to gleeful poltergeist Grandpa Why to the spirit of an oversized queer cockroach named Shin, each boldly drawn point-of-view character adds a new layer to the story and texture to the world in which it’s set. Style occasionally overshadows substance, fuzzing the tale’s focus, and readers seeking catharsis may be left wanting, but by and large, Leung’s novel strikes a satisfying chord, harmonizing joy and optimism with despair and melancholia. Surreal imagery combines with poetic prose to illustrate what life and love look like when crisis becomes commonplace and everyone is grieving—even the ghosts.

At once absurd and profound.

Kirkus Reviews

2025 Publishing Triangle Award, Short-listed
2025 Gotham Book Prize, Short-listed
2025 Lambda Literary Award, Short-listed

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