Vacation rental with the in-laws — for many, it’s a setup for disaster. In Weike Wang’s “Rental House,” it’s certainly that. It’s also an opportunity for Wang, a wildly gifted writer, to explore the upside and downside of education, marriage and family. Add to the mix an interracial couple where one partner hails from an Appalachian background like that of JD Vance and the other’s life was shaped by the policies of Chairman Mao, and you have all you need for a laugh-out-loud satire of American dysfunction.
The heroes are Nate and Keru, who meet sort-of-cute at a Halloween party their senior year at Yale. She’s in a leopard-print turtleneck, plaid jacket and shiny gold pants to represent “a bad dress day.” He’s got a fin strapped to his back to stand for “great white,” as in shark, not, Keru later realizes, his status as another well-to-do Caucasian male at an Ivy League school. Nate is anything but that. His background is hillbilly, minus the elegy, the first generation in his family to go to college. Keru is first-gen, too, having emigrated to this country as a child with her Chinese parents.
Both are whip smart. He studies fruit flies, she’s in consulting. Five years into their marriage, they invite each set of parents to spend a week at their Cape Cod beach house. By then, they’ve become doting parents of a giant sheepdog, Mantou, whose name means “steamed bun” in Chinese. As their parents arrive in staggered shifts, Wang gleefully pokes fun at each family’s prejudices and quirks. “To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,” Keru’s demanding father tells Nate sternly. But the light-hearted tone darkens when Keru, stressed out by her in-laws’ visit, has a meltdown.
In the second half of the book, the stakes are higher. It’s five years later, and Keru is making gobs more money than her tenured professor husband though it requires 80-hour weeks. Easygoing Nate has been diagnosed with anxiety and even Mantou is depressed.
This time, they rent a house in a luxury development in the Catskills, where Keru must harness her considerable problem-solving skills to steer their little ship of family through unexpected visits from nosy, obnoxious neighbors and Nate’s ne’er-do-well brother.
Though ostensibly a comedy of manners built around an opposites-attract couple, Wang’s novel, her third after “Chemistry” and “Joan Is Okay,” is a poignant, profound meditation on this divided country enlivened by her dry wit and deadpan style.
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AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews
Ann Levin, The Associated Press
