Review: Joan Is Okay

Joan Is Okay by Weike Wang
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

No, Joan is not okay by any means. However, I am not sure exactly what this book is supposed to be about, as it covers many areas.  Mainly, I think it is about a very successful Dr. who possibly has Asperger Syndrome and now has to deal with various difficulties.  The main problem being the sudden death of her father.

Think of this book as a spider, with the spider's body being Joan's father's death.  The legs will be problems she faces at work, her big brother, her sister-in-law who thinks Joan would be happier married with children (or unmarried with children). Add in her mother, who has come over from China to visit and can't go home, a forced leave from work, a nosy new neighbor, and then to top it all off, Covid 19.

A quote in this book almost sums this novel up for me "...while expressing trivial but inconsistent thoughts." (at 74%).  A lot of Joans' problems seemed to be trivial and brought upon herself. 

This was a fast read and can be done in about 3-5 hours (only 224 pages), depending on your attention span.  Mine was not so great! As far as this book being "witty," no, not really, more depressing than anything else.  But I can see in some respect why this book was also described as "insightful".

*ARC supplied by the publisher Random House, the author, and NetGalley.

View all my reviews

SYNOPSIS "A witty, moving, piercingly insightful new novel about a marvelously complicated woman who can’t be anyone but herself, from the award-winning author of Chemistry

Joan is a thirtysomething ICU doctor at a busy New York City hospital. The daughter of Chinese parents who came to the United States to secure the American dream for their children, Joan is intensely devoted to her work, happily solitary, successful. She does look up sometimes and wonder where her true roots lie: at the hospital, where her white coat makes her feel needed, or with her family, who try to shape her life by their own cultural and social expectations.

Once Joan and her brother, Fang, were established in their careers, her parents moved back to China, hoping to spend the rest of their lives in their homeland. But when Joan’s father suddenly dies and her mother returns to America to reconnect with her children, a series of events sends Joan spiraling out of her comfort zone just as her hospital, her city, and the world are forced to reckon with a health crisis more devastating than anyone could have imagined.

Deceptively spare yet quietly powerful, laced with sharp humor, Joan Is Okay touches on matters that feel deeply resonant: being Chinese-American right now; working in medicine at a high-stakes time; finding one’s voice within a dominant culture; being a woman in a male-dominated workplace; and staying independent within a tight-knit family. But above all, it’s a portrait of one remarkable woman so surprising that you can’t get her out of your head."