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Rental House by Weike Wang

Literary fiction

Rental House

by Weike Wang

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Quick take

During two family vacations, a married couple of different cultural backgrounds must reckon with each other’s in-laws.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Multiple_Viewpoints

    Multiple viewpoints

  • Illustrated icon, Social_Issues

    Social issues

  • Illustrated icon, Family_Drama

    Family drama

  • Illustrated icon, Marriage_Issues

    Marriage issues

Synopsis

Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,” says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign” wife.

Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?

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Get an early look from the first pages of Rental House.

Rental House

She had started looking in winter, browsing rental sites recommended by friends who went away for long periods of summer and knew about this stuff. They knew which towns along the Cape had the cleanest beaches, which towns on Nantucket were the most kid friendly, and which ice cream stands the Obamas frequented on the Vineyard. These tips she wrote down on a notepad. Martha’s Vineyard = Obamas = ice cream. She’d marked ­kid-friendly places as ones to avoid. She and her husband of five years had discussed visiting the Cape before, but for five years had not. It was decided that this was the summer to do so. They would leave Manhattan and spend a month within walking distance of the Atlantic Ocean, in a classic New England cottage with gables, shutters, and two beds. Two beds so that both sets of parents could visit, staggered.

In the lead-up weeks, Nate spoke of staying realistic. The year prior there’d been a pandemic. They’d forgone seeing parents or leaving the house much. He preferred the bubble but knew that bubbles had to be left. Soon, they were in a rental car, driving north. The trunk was full of food, clothes, cleaning supplies, and their gigantic four-year-old sheepdog, Mantou, sat upright in the back seat. While the idealistic vision of a trip with their parents had come from Keru, raising a ­full-​­size sheepdog in the city had been Nate’s idea. A sheepdog fulfilled a boyhood dream. The pastoral one, of endless fields and a friend about your height whose fur your small hands could sink into and who could guide you into the magical woods. Nate had grown up in a small, ­one-​­story house with brown carpets. His mother had allowed two rats, many fish, a snake, but no dogs. “Those purebreds are expensive and bougie,” she’d said. “Why waste money on them, when there are so many strays in need?”—​­none his mother ever took in.

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Why I love it

I was late to the game with Weike Wang’s Chemistry, a 2017 Book of the Month selection and my obsession this summer. While I kicked myself for not reading it sooner, when I saw that Rental House was right around the corner, I was able to immediately snatch it up. And how lucky I was: Weike Wang’s signature keen eye and wit fill every page of this tragic, hilarious, and fully realized story about the messy experience of combining two very different families via marriage.

Keru and Nate are college sweethearts. Married for some years, they find themselves on two vacations that join their families in ways they never prepared for. Keru, the only child of Chinese immigrant parents, has had the weight of the world placed on her from the time she was a child. Nate is from a working-class white family that finds his chosen, intellectual community dubious. Confronted with the very different expectations of their families at once, the couple is forced to contend with the values they grew up with versus the ones they chose in their marriage. Traveling across the beaches of Cape Cod and the mountains of the Catskills, Keru and Nate do their best to keep peace and create a messy, but loving, patchwork family.

Rental House is a gem of a novel. Wang’s prose is infectious and speaks with such honesty that you can’t help but feel like an intimate part of these characters’ story. Relatable, funny, and deeply emotional, Rental House is the perfect book to cozy up with during the holidays—especially when you have to face your own family’s quirks.

Member ratings (17)

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Literary fiction
View all
Intermezzo
The Book of George
Real Americans
Dirty Diana
Wellness
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
The God of the Woods
Same As It Ever Was
Annie Bot
Bear
Mercury
True Biz
Family Happiness
The Husbands
The Lady Waiting
The Other Valley
Hard by a Great Forest
Good Material
The Bullet Swallower
Happy All the Time
Rental House
Alice Sadie Celine
Let Us Descend
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Shark Heart
Homeseeking
Transcendent Kingdom
Hello Beautiful
Dominicana
What's Mine and Yours
The Unsettled
Ask Again, Yes
Vladimir
Infinite Country
The Prophets
Normal People
The Verifiers
Salvage the Bones
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
I Have Some Questions for You
Black Buck
The History of Love
Age of Vice
Paper Names
The Light Pirate
The Secret History
The Kite Runner
Memorial
The Half Moon
Happiness Falls
The Gifted School
The Death of Vivek Oji
The Knockout Queen
Little Monsters
Yerba Buena
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Free Food for Millionaires
A Burning
The Mothers
The Water Dancer
Small Country
The Sympathizer
Fleishman Is in Trouble
Lot
An American Marriage
The Animators
The Mars Room
Exit West
White Fur
Woman No. 17
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Eat Only When You're Hungry
Rainbirds
A Ladder to the Sky
Golden Child
The Goldfinch
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
& Sons
The Association of Small Bombs
Lolly Willowes
All Grown Up
Marlena
Signal Fires
Someday, Maybe
Woman of Light
Marrying the Ketchups
The Shards