Narrator Eunice Wong's consistent pace and vocal variety are perfect for this audiobook, which dissects feminism, race, and wealth in an organic way. Ellie is devastated when her husband, Ian, dies suddenly. At 29, Ellie thought she had decades more with him. At the funeral she discovers that Ian had a mistress, and, enraged by this, she uses Ian's life insurance to book a lavish French vacation for herself and her best friend, Mable. The friends meet a couple there, and through their interactions, Ellie reassesses her views on life. Wong's nuanced performance includes a flat voice when a joke doesn't land, an intern's timid tone, tearfully warbling speech, and petulant, slurred claims from a drunk woman. A.L.C. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
You Can't Stay Here Forever: A Novel
Narrated by Eunice Wong
Katherine LinUnabridged — 8 hours, 5 minutes
You Can't Stay Here Forever: A Novel
Narrated by Eunice Wong
Katherine LinUnabridged — 8 hours, 5 minutes
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Overview
Named a must-read book of summer by: Good Morning America, People, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the Philadelphia Inquirer and one of the best books of the year by the New York Post
Desperate to obliterate her past, a young widow flees California for the French Riviera in this compelling debut, a tale of loss, rebirth, modern friendship, and romance that blends Sally Rooney's wryness and psychological insight with Emma Straub's gorgeous scene-setting and rich relationships.
Just days after her young, handsome husband dies in a car accident, Ellie Huang discovers that he had a mistress-one of her own colleagues at a prestigious San Francisco law firm. Acting on impulse-or is it grief? rage? Probably all three-Ellie cashes in Ian's life insurance policy for an extended stay at the luxurious Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, France. Accompanying her is her free-spirited best friend, Mable Chou.
Ellie hopes that the five-star resort on the French Riviera, with its stunning clientele and floral-scented cocktails, will be a heady escape from the real world. And at first it is. She and Mable meet an intriguing couple, Fauna and Robbie, and as their poolside chats roll into wine-soaked dinners, the four become increasingly intimate. But the sunlit getaway soon turns into a reckoning for Ellie, as long-simmering tensions and uncomfortable truths swirl to the surface.
Taking the reader from San Francisco to the gilded luxury of the south of France, You Can't Stay Here Forever is a sharply funny and exciting debut that explores the slippery nature of marriage, the push and pull between friends, and the interplay of race and privilege, seen through the eyes of a young Asian American woman.
Editorial Reviews
04/24/2023
Lin debuts with the thoughtful if uneven story of a 29-year-old lawyer’s search for meaning after the death of her husband. Ellie Huang’s seemingly perfect world is shattered after her husband, Ian, dies in a car accident. What’s more, Ellie discovers during the funeral that Ian had been cheating on her. With an unexpectedly large life insurance payout in hand, Ellie flees to a posh hotel in the south of France, accompanied by longtime friend Mable Chou. The women spend their days swathed in luxury and befriend a couple, Fauna and Robbie. Ellie is particularly drawn to the latter—his “genuine warmth” makes her feel like she’s talking to a therapist. Meanwhile, Ellie grapples with the “garden-variety racism” she’s dealt with at her firm, where a senior partner repeatedly confuses her with another Asian woman, as well as microaggressions from others and conflicted feelings about her Asian immigrant mother. Some of Ellie’s musings are insightful (worse than the racism, for Ellie, is that the partner doesn’t know her), though others are a bit rote (“I like feeling as if other people are making my choices for me,” she tells Fauna), and despite some drama from her attraction to Robbie, the plot fizzles. Nevertheless, Lin piles on the charm with Ellie and Mable’s inside jokes and descriptions of the decadent setting. There’s some fun to be had, but it’s fleeting. Agent: Elizabeth Bewley, Sterling Lord Literistic. (June)
Feel like taking a trip to Hotel du Cap in the south of France? Just open up Katherine Lin's new novel about female friendship, identity, ambition and love….[a] beautiful, atmospheric read.” — Good Morning America
"Don't miss this trip." — People, "Our Must-Reads for Summer"
"The Shady Husband Mystery is its own literary subgenre....Katherine Lin enters the canon with her debut novel....a subtle, character-driven story about interracial marriage...[and] opposites-attract friendship....Through memories, Lin skillfully reveals Ellie and Ian’s marriage of contrasts....Lin is deft and never overbearing in her handling of race." — New York Times Book Review
"A transportive debut." — Boston Globe
"An entertaining escape." — San Francisco Chronicle
“Lin’s sharp writing and perspectives on the Asian American experience in modern times, the shifting tides of marriages and the complexity of friendships that signals a captivating new voice on the literary scene.” — East Bay Express
“Lin’s debut is a heartwarming novel about self-discovery after loss, as she explores grief, deep disappointment, female relationships, and the Asian American perspective of living in a dominantly wealthy and privileged white society.” — Booklist
"A riveting debut with rich characterization, scenic setting, and sharp insights on relationships, class, and one Asian American woman’s experience." — Library Journal
"Lin's treatment of the glamorous, decadent setting, with its stream of gourmet meals and artisanal cocktails, is far from escapist . . . .vshe has complicated things to say about privilege and its intersection with race, ambition, and identity. A probing, astute portrayal of a fraught and late-blooming coming-of-age." — Kirkus Reviews
"Katherine Lin's You Can't Stay Here Forever is compulsively readable, so much so that it's easy to overlook the astute intelligence that permeates every page. Reading this novel is like falling in love: delightful, poignant, and thrilling." — Jean Kwok, New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Translation and Searching for Sylvie Lee
“This glistening debut is filled with all the wanderlust, rage, and longing of early adulthood, and proves—in sinuous and Bacchic prose—that the dissolution of a friendship is a terrifying prospect.” — Courtney Maum, author of The Year of the Horses
“I was totally drawn in from the first page of You Can’t Stay Here Forever. All the contradictions of Ellie’s situation as the American child of East Asian immigrants are explored with empathy and nuance, and the book’s brilliantly observed, horribly recognizable moments are handled with the lightest of touches.” — Emily Itami, author of Fault Lines
"You Can't Stay Here Forever is a keen and expansive rumination on love, betrayal, and class set between the Bay Area and the South of France. A wry and exciting debut that while set in rarified luxury, portrays universal struggles of friendship, work and marriage." — Kathy Wang, author of Family Trust and Impostor Syndrome
Narrator Eunice Wong's consistent pace and vocal variety are perfect for this audiobook, which dissects feminism, race, and wealth in an organic way. Ellie is devastated when her husband, Ian, dies suddenly. At 29, Ellie thought she had decades more with him. At the funeral she discovers that Ian had a mistress, and, enraged by this, she uses Ian's life insurance to book a lavish French vacation for herself and her best friend, Mable. The friends meet a couple there, and through their interactions, Ellie reassesses her views on life. Wong's nuanced performance includes a flat voice when a joke doesn't land, an intern's timid tone, tearfully warbling speech, and petulant, slurred claims from a drunk woman. A.L.C. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
2023-03-28
After her husband is killed in a car crash, a recently married lawyer learns he was involved with another woman for years.
And it’s someone she works with! This disgusting detail is just one piece of an avalanche of bad news that tumbles down on poor Ellie Huang in the first chapters of Lin’s debut. By the time she learns that her husband, Ian Anderson, a lawyer of less skill and brains but significantly more social elbow grease than she, was screwing this other woman even before he proposed marriage, she’s reeling. It’s then that a piece of somewhat better news arrives—Ian had life insurance based on a forecast of his future earnings, and Ellie is the sole beneficiary. In addition, her supervisor at work really thinks she needs to take some time off, as her sentences have stopped making sense. Her best friend, Mable Chou, who has been staying over at Ellie's house every night since the accident, strongly recommends therapy. She could pay off the house, but does she even want to live there anymore? Ellie decides to put her windfall to use flying Mable and herself first class to Nice, and then on to the ultra-luxurious Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes. This premise sounds like fun, but Lin’s protagonist is no merry widow, and her narrative takes things in a more serious direction. At the resort, Ellie and Mable make friends with a somewhat mysterious couple—the man Asian like them, the woman White. Long-standing flaws in the friendship are exposed by their differing reactions to Robbie and Fauna as well as by Ellie's choppy processing of her complicated grief and rage. (Mable’s right—she really does need therapy.) Lin's treatment of the glamorous, decadent setting, with its stream of gourmet meals and artisanal cocktails, is far from escapist wealth porn—she has complicated things to say about privilege and its intersection with race, ambition, and identity.
A probing, astute portrayal of a fraught and late-blooming coming-of-age.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940175934329 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 06/13/2023 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Sales rank: | 1,179,071 |
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