"Keru and Nate first meet in college, brought together by a joke at a Halloween party (would a "great white" costume mean dressing like a shark or a privileged Ivy League student?) and marrying a few years later. Misfits in their own families, they find in each other a feeling of home. Keru is the only child of strict, well-educated Chinese immigrant parents who hold her to impossible standards even as an adult ("To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat," says her father). Nate is from a rural, white, working class family that has never trusted his intellectual ambitions or - now - the citizenship status of his "foreign" wife. Nevertheless, some years into their marriage, Keru and Nate find themselves incorporating their families into two carefully plannedvacations. The results are disastrous and revealing. First in a cozy beach house on Cape Cod, and later in a luxury bungalow in the Catskills, the couple is forced to confront the hidden truths at the core of their relationship. Alongside their giant sheepdog Mantou, Keru and Nate navigate visits from in-laws, a sibling, and surprising new friends, all while trying to determine if they have what it takes to make themselves and each other happy. How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) are needed to make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what does it take to shepherd everyone back together?"-- - (Baker & Taylor)

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. - (Penguin Putnam)

Weike Wang is the author of the novels Chemistry and Joan is Okay. She is the recipient of a PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, a Whiting Award, and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and Best American Short Stories, among other publications. She lives in New York City and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University and Barnard College. - (Penguin Putnam)

Booklist Reviews

Keru seems to have an enviable life. She's married to her college sweetheart. They both have Yale degrees. She enjoys a successful consulting career, currently assigned to a high-power eight-month project in Chicago while Nathan remains professoring in Manhattan. They purposefully don't have kids, content with fur baby Mantou. They take nice vacations, and in these rental houses Wang cleverly reveals what's behind the fragile façades. In the "classic New England cottage" at the Cape, the couple ensure that visits are "strategic." First, there's Keru's immigrant Chinese American parents, still obsessive-compulsively concerned about pandemic-induced safety, then Nathan's North Carolinian parents, who hail from the other end of that spectrum, beyond objections to vaccines and quarantines. Five years later, the couple is in a tony Catskills bungalow for Nathan's fortieth birthday, where the companionship of cosmopolitan strangers and the unannounced visit of Nathan's estranged brother and his latest not-girlfriend expose growing instability. In her third novel, award-winning Wang again considers immigrant identity, interracial relationships, socioeconomic divides, and family dysfunction. As Wang matures, so have her characters, inhabiting significantly more soulful, intimate, resonating narratives. Copyright 2024 Booklist Reviews.

Library Journal Reviews

Award-winning Wang (author of the multi-best-booked Joan Is Okay) examines the challenges of family and marriage. Keru is the daughter of strict, well-educated Chinese immigrant parents, while Nate comes from a white, working-class family. Keru and Nate marry, but when their families join them on vacation, the couple's strained relationships with their in-laws force them to confront their own hidden truths. Prepub Alert. Copyright 2024 Library Journal

Library Journal Reviews

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

Publishers Weekly Reviews

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.)