Chemistry

The unnamed narrator is a chemistry PhD student in Boston, the American-born daughter of Chinese immigrant parents who measured love in achievement and expected nothing less than a doctorate. When her kind, steady boyfriend proposes, she finds she cannot answer, and the small refusal cracks open everything else she has been holding together. Her research stalls, her funding lapses, and the future she was supposed to want stops making sense. Told in short, exact fragments threaded with stray facts about science and stubborn memories of her parents, the book follows a young woman as she loses the thread of the life she was building. Wang turns a quiet breakdown into a study of ambition, inheritance, and the courage it takes to disappoint everyone who loves you.