HOW TO FALL IN LOVE IN A TIME OF UNNAMEABLE DISASTER

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.