Karissa Chen’s Homeseeking (Putnam 2025) is a novel of choices and resilience, spanning 1938 – 2008 in the lives of dual souls divided by distance and circumstance. Suji/Suchi/Sue and Doudou/Haiwen/Howard became ready friends as children and that friendship quickly blossomed into a deep love that would act as a magnetic force, pulling them toward each other their entire lives. If you recall my review of The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern, I called it the saddest book because it took too many years for Augusta and Irving to reconnect and get their happily after all. Homeseeking is sadder.
Through dual POVs and jumping timelines, Chen takes the reader on a historical journey of war, famine, and chance through Hong Kong, Taiwan, New York, and California. Languages and histories blend and break along with their lives. Mandarin. Cantonese. Taiwanese. Shanghainese. English. Suchi and Haiwen dance between languages with ease – even their early years had been marked by a multi-lingual relationship. (Please read the author’s note at the beginning!) For decades, their lives ran adjacent, with each just seeking to survive. Sometimes, those lines were perfectly parallel, other times they kissed next to each other, same place and the right time to prevent someone from ending it all.
Homeseeking is a novel of the Chinese diaspora – a search for happiness and home while rebuilding from the ruins. It’s sad, there’s no denying that. But there’s a beauty in the ruins, a beauty of survival, of self, of living. With a comfortable writing style, Chen will readily have you captivated.
It’s a BOTM selection, a GMA Book Club pick, and Laura Beth will be hosting a virtual author chat with Karissa Chen on 5/19 – plenty of time to pick it up! (I should warn you – she’s deliciously chunky!)
Read this book!
A Girl Named Tommi 