Central Places: A Novel

Delia Cai

Jan 2023 · Sold by Ballantine Books

About this ebook

A PHENOMENAL BOOK CLUB PICK • “A sensitive, sharp-eyed, slyly funny novel of venturing back into the foreign country that is your past—and discovering that you can never really shake the places and people that shaped you.”—Celeste Ng, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Our Missing Hearts
 
A young woman’s past and present collide when she brings her white fiancé home to meet her Chinese immigrant parents in this vibrant debut from an exciting new voice in fiction.

A HARPER’S BAZAAR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Audrey Zhou left Hickory Grove, the tiny central Illinois town where she grew up, as soon as high school ended, and she never looked back. She moved to New York City and became the person she always wanted to be, complete with a high-paying, high-pressure job and a seemingly faultless fiancé. But if she and Manhattan-bred Ben are to build a life together, in the dream home his parents will surely pay for, Audrey can no longer hide him, or the person she’s become, from those she left behind.

But returning to Hickory Grove is . . . complicated. Audrey’s relationship with her parents has been soured by years of her mother’s astronomical expectations and slights. The friends she’s shirked for bigger dreams have stayed behind and started families. And then there’s Kyle, the easygoing stoner and her unrequited crush from high school that she finds herself drawn to again. Ben might be a perfect fit for New Audrey, but Kyle was always the only one who truly understood her growing up, and being around him again after all these years has Old Audrey bubbling up to the surface.

Over the course of one disastrous week, Audrey’s proximity to her family and to Kyle forces her to confront the past and reexamine her fraught connection to her roots before she undoes everything she's worked toward and everything she's imagined for herself. But is that life really the one she wants?

Ratings and reviews

As I ruminate over the story of Audrey Zhou, I am not certain if I liked it or not. Over an eight year period away from her parents and the small town she grew up in, Audrey returns with her fiance, Ben. She has cultivated a persona in New York far removed from the past. Her strong capable persona implodes as she sees the friends and family she left behind. Ben is mostly clueless about her relationship with her parents as Audrey has not chosen to share about them. Her mother is wrapped in disappointment with Audrey and never fails to voice it. Her father is quiet and resigned. It is a story of history returning, lost relationships, and mistakes. I cannot say I enjoyed the story. It was interesting. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

About the author

Delia Cai was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and grew up in central Illinois. She is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism and her writing has appeared in BuzzFeed, GQ, The Cut, and Catapult. Her media newsletter, Deez Links, has been highlighted in The New York Times, New York magazine, and Fortune. She is currently a senior correspondent at Vanity Fair and lives in Brooklyn. Central Places is her first novel.