Iris

From the award-winning author of Chemistry and Rental House, a sharp and perceptive novel about two artists who wonder if their instant and electric connection is romantic, platonic, creative, destructive, or even remotely sustainable.

Widely celebrated as a pitch-perfect chronicler of life’s most intricate relationships, Weike Wang brings her uniquely wry wit and tender observations to the “will-they-or-won’t-they” dynamic between two new friends, a semi-romance that will have a surprising impact on one woman’s creative life.

When Iris and Bowen meet at an artists’ residency, the connection is immediate. Both are married to other people, but their long, riveting debates and stolen moments make Iris, an author struggling with writer’s block, feel newly alive. After they return to their lives in New York City, their spiky repartee continues with impassioned debates about books, reflections on a shared Chinese-American heritage, and confessions of mutual attraction. When the ticking time bomb of a possible affair becomes impossible to ignore, they meet up for an epic, day-long date that will decide their future.

A novel that is, like its heroine, alert to the powers of language and literature, Iris is the whip-smart, emotionally incisive story of a woman buffeted by family judgement, personal desire, and romantic ideals as she navigates her choices, untangling her ideas about love, art, and partnership. The guidance that she finds in the lives and works of her artistic heroes may be what finally allows her to confront her rockiest relationship of all: the one she has with herself.