Rental House: A Novel

by Weike Wang

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 author Weike Wang asks questions of home, family and identity in one big-hearted story. If you think your family is complicated, read this book.

DAKOTA JOHNSON’S TEATIME PICTURES DECEMBER BOOK CLUB PICK 

ONE OF NPR’S “BOOKS WE LOVE” 2024

“One of the most nuanced, astute critiques of America now I’ve read in years. And it’s also frequently hilarious.”
—Los Angeles Times

“A funny, perceptive look at what it means to defy societal expectations…timeless.”
—Washington Post

“[For] basically anyone who is breathing, Rental House is a must-read."
—San Francisco Chronicle

“Sharp, insightful, occasionally heartbreaking, and incredibly relatable.”
—Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“For anyone who’s experienced demanding parents, misunderstanding in-laws, a vacation-gone-wrong, or mid-life questions about how to reconcile your own personality liabilities with those of the person you love most.”
—Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot

From the award-winning author of Chemistry, a sharp-witted, insightful novel about a marriage as seen through the lens of two family vacations

Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,” says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign” wife.
 
Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash?  How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?

With her “wry, wise, and simply spectacular” style (People) and “hilarious deadpan that recalls Gish Jen and Nora Ephron” (O, The Oprah Magazine), Weike Wang offers a portrait of family that is equally witty, incisive, and tender.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593545560
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/03/2024
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	7,733
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Weike Wang is the author of the novels Chemistry and Joan Is Okay. She is the recipient of a PEN/Hemingway Award and a Whiting Award and is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. She lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

★ 10/07/2024

In this wonderfully acerbic outing from Wang (Joan Is Okay), a married couple from New York City face pressure from their in-laws and others on two separate vacations. First, Nate and Keru host Keru’s Chinese immigrant parents on Cape Cod, where they’ve rented a house. On their final night together, they debate the virtues of suffering, which Keru’s mother prizes as essential to a person’s success. Then they host Nate’s parents, blue-collar Trump supporters from the Blue Ridge Mountains who Keru struggles to connect with, especially after Nate’s mother complains about the house being too small. Five years later, the couple rents a bungalow in the Catskills, where comments from neighbors about their “double income, no kids” household activate a long-dormant fault line in the couple’s relationship: Nate, a scientist, earns far less than Keru, a business consultant. Later, Nate’s deadbeat older brother makes a surprise appearance, talking up his newest business venture, a gym, and pressuring Nate to invest in it. Wang excels at setting the tone with biting prose, describing the Catskills’ fall foliage as the “mass death of deciduous leaves,” and the scenes of family drama are compulsively readable. It’s a tour de force. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Rental House:

“One of the most nuanced, astute critiques of America now I’ve read in years. And it’s also frequently hilarious...[Wang] is at her most poignant and penetrating. She’s cast her lens, with immense empathy, on how divisiveness has hardened our desolation and made us more desirous than ever of a connection we rarely feel. She’s done what only great fiction writers can do."
—Los Angeles Times

“Wang paints an elegantly off-kilter portrait of partnership and its isolations, and of the ungainly, imperfect intimacy of family.”
—The New York Times

"Blazingly insightful, Weike Wang’s Rental House is a pitch-perfect send-up of all the ways we humans can misunderstand or unintentionally (sometimes intentionally) wound our loved ones and drive each other crazy...[For] basically anyone who is breathing, Rental House is a must-read."
—San Francisco Chronicle

"Wang wryly examines the nuances of class and culture, while also showing that, in the messy terrain of a family with wildly varied values and assumptions, surprising—and profound—moments of unity can still be found."
—The New Yorker

"If you’re desperate for an escape from your family during the holidays, dive into Rental House for a complete immersion into different families with different problems...Sharply observed and compulsively readable, Rental House reminds us that we are all the products of our upbringings, for better or for worse."
—Esquire

“Incisively written…Will have you cackling with laughter and provide an insight into the struggles others face with their families." —Seattle Times

“Weike Wang has the juice....Like her earlier books, Rental House is also driven by Wang’s devastating deadpan wit. It is truly a marvel…the wit is the energy core that delivers the juice.”
—Chicago Tribune

“When a couple wed, they also marry their in-laws… a humorous, insightful take on marriage, ambition, race and class.” –People

“The couple’s attempt to negotiate family pressures and personal desires makes Rental House by Weike Wang an insightful, delightfully snarky book…It might give you an ideal escape from your own extended family over the holidays.” —Real Simple

“Sharp, insightful, occasionally heartbreaking, and incredibly relatable.”
—Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“A sharp and affecting portrait of a couple navigating their hopes, anxieties, and families of origin over time, Rental House is sparkling with insight, its characters drawn with love and precision.”
—Lisa Ko, author of Memory Piece

“Funny and delightful, Rental House is a story for anyone who’s experienced demanding parents, misunderstanding in-laws, a vacation-gone-wrong, or mid-life questions about how to reconcile your own personality liabilities with those of the person you love most.”
—Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot

“Wonderfully acerbic…Wang excels at setting the tone with biting prose…and the scenes of family drama are compulsively readable. It’s a tour de force.”
—Publishers Weekly [STARRED REVIEW]

“Wang is an incisive writer with sharp psychological insight ...[Rental House] is subtle and powerful in its cultural critique and will surely be relatable for anyone who has in-laws. A compelling portrait of family dynamics under pressure.”
—Kirkus [STARRED REVIEW]

“A tender portrait of family and what ties them together, or sometimes makes them clash.” —SheReads

From the Publisher

★ 12/01/2024

Wang's (Joan Is Okay; Chemistry) stellar new novel is a sharp portrayal of a marriage and its fault lines in between two family vacations. Two or so years after the start of the pandemic, married couple Nate and Keru rent a house for a month on Cape Cod. They met at a college party and eventually married, despite their vast differences in values and temperament. While at the Cape, they host their parents one at a time. Keru's parents, who immigrated from China when she was a small child, value hard work and suffering and bristle at the expensive surroundings at the Cape. Nate's deeply conservative parents are nice to Keru on the surface but are still occasionally xenophobic. They are also science deniers, even though their son is a scientist. Keru, as a consultant, out-earns Nate. This fact, plus their decision not to have children, causes conflict with each of their families. Five years later, a vacation in the Catskills brings Nate's ne'er-do-well brother to their expensive rental house. VERDICT Wang writes a quiet, introspective novel of relationships, family obligations, and resentments that build over time and what makes a family. Highly recommended.—Lynnanne Pearson

Library Journal

Jen Zhao delivers an insightful performance of this novel, which is structured around several family vacations. College sweethearts Keru and Nate have never fit in with their families and have made their own family with their sheepdog, Mantou. Cultural differences between Keru's cautious immigrant parents and Nate's boisterous American parents have created an additional fissure, so the families have taken up vacationing separately. When Keru and Nate meet a European family on vacation, they must reevaluate their feelings about their families and their marriage. Zhao's even-paced voice provides empathy and unexpected humor. Using Romanian, Chinese American, and Southern accents, Zhao breathes life into the characters. This contemplative novel is a quick, thought-provoking listen. C.R. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2024 - AudioFile

★ 2024-08-30
An interracial couple vacations with both sets of parents.

Following the success of her novelsChemistry (2017) andJoan Is Okay (2022), Wang returns with the story of Keru and Nate, a Chinese American woman and a white man who meet at Yale, fall in love, and get married. Some years later, they go on two vacations—to Cape Cod and the Catskills—during which both sets of parents, as well as some unexpected visitors, come to stay with them. As they share rental houses with their families (and their large dog, Mantou), racial, cultural, and class tensions come to the surface. Keru’s Chinese immigrant parents are demanding and rigid, while Nate’s white, Appalachian, working-class parents (the couple argues at one point about whether they’re “white trash”) have their own set of particularities and prejudices. Keru chafes against Nate’s parents’ rural conservatism, occasional racism, and constant need to keep up appearances through pleasantries, even when conflict lurks beneath the surface. On the other hand, Nate feels intimidated and judged for his amateur Mandarin skills and reliance upon bourgeois comforts that Keru’s parents, as immigrants who have had to live in less ideal conditions, feel are lazy. (In one memorable incident, Keru’s father proclaims that “to use a dishwasher is to admit defeat.”) Caught in the crossfire of these contrasting mentalities and expectations, Keru and Nate are forced to reflect on the values that shape their relationship and their burgeoning family. Wang is an incisive writer with sharp psychological insight who does dialogue particularly well, revealing what is not said in conversation just as much as what is said out loud. This quietly engrossing novel is subtle and powerful in its cultural critique and will surely be relatable for anyone who has in-laws.

A compelling portrait of family dynamics under pressure.

Kirkus Reviews