Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar by Katie Yee

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Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar by Katie Yee

Literary fiction

Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar

Debut
Early Release

by Katie Yee

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Quick take

In this tragicomic tour de force, a young mother rebuilds her sense of self after a divorce and cancer diagnosis.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Female_Friendship

    Female friendships

  • Illustrated icon, Mama_Drama

    Mama drama

  • Illustrated icon, Infidelity

    Infidelity

  • Illustrated icon, Under200

    Under 200 pages

Synopsis

A man and a woman walk into a restaurant. The woman expects a lovely night filled with endless plates of samosas. Instead, she finds out her husband is having an affair with a woman named Maggie.

A short while after, her chest starts to ache. She walks into an examination room, where she finds out the pain in her breast isn’t just heartbreak—it’s cancer. She decides to call the tumor Maggie.

Unfolding in fragments over the course of the ensuing months, Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar follows the narrator as she embarks on a journey of grief, healing, and reclamation. She starts talking to Maggie (the tumor), getting acquainted with her body’s new inhabitant. She overgenerously creates a “Guide to My Husband: A User’s Manual” for Maggie (the other woman), hoping to ease the process of discovering her ex-husband’s whims and quirks. She turns her children’s bedtime stories into retellings of Chinese folklore passed down by her own mother, in an attempt to make them fall in love with their shared culture—and to maybe save herself in the process.

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Get an early look from the first pages of Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar.

Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar

I was folding linens when I first found out my children don’t think I’m funny. I was by the hall closet, overhearing them asking my husband for a bedtime story. This was after I’d already read them Where the Wild Things Are, a book they used to love so much the pages were starting to pull from their binding. He reminded them of this. A good husband. And they told him, “You’d tell it better.” And so he did. A better father.

The thing I noticed that was peculiar about my husband’s telling was that the characters are all out of sorts. Max doesn’t sail away from his room in the usual boat. A bald boy named Harold shows up, paddling past in an ill-drawn dinghy, clutching a purple crayon. As my husband tells it, they sail off together but lose their way. They float for what feels like days, until they happen upon an island they come to know as Neverland, where a ragtag gang of boys their age pulls them in. They were Lost Boys all along. Go figure.

It became a bad habit. I’d read them their story, kiss their sweaty foreheads, try not to step on Lincoln Logs on the way out. I’d tread downstairs, begin to soak the pots and pans, and then I’d stand in the hall, at the bottom of the staircase, listening to them beg my husband for a better story. It was a small betrayal. Night after night, he’d pluck a character from one book and drop it into another. The mismatched-ness made them laugh. It’s unexpected; it’s not right. That’s what makes it fun. Little Red Riding Hood turning up at her grandmother’s house only to find, not Grandma, not the Wolf, no, but Sleeping Beauty instead.

And my kids are in fits over it.

It hurts in an unexpected way, like doing yoga for the first time in a long while and realizing you can’t bend the way you thought you could; a new soreness.

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Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar
July 2025
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Finding Grace
How Freaking Romantic
Among Friends
You Belong Here
These Summer Storms
Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar