Maybe I'm A Regular

There is a bookstore in Ann Arbor, MI that I will forever and always adore: Literati. It sits on the corner of Washington St. and 4th Ave, recognizable by its green brick façade. The black and white checkerboard painted atop its hardwood floors runs the length of the store and could easily be mistaken for tile. The store offers a “public typewriter," inviting patrons to leave behind ponderings as they walk through. Notecards hang scattered across the shelves, cramped with commentary from the staff with a spotlighted shelf for “Staff Picks.” 

There was a day I walked in and saw that shelf monopolized by turquoise. A member of their staff had just released her debut novel and, in both support and solidarity, every staff member had named it their “recent staff pick.” How neat, I thought, picking up a copy and perusing its pages.

I have a ritual for considering books off the shelf. 

1. I judge the book by its cover. Everyone does; what makes you pull it off the shelf in the first place? The title, the font, the color–whatever it is, something drew your eye. This is an undeniable fact. 

2. I read the first sentence. There is a lot of emphasis put on the first sentence. If an author botches the opener, that doesn’t speak well for the quality of the following pages. 

The waiters were singing “Happy Birthday” in Chinese. 

Page 1

3. I flip somewhere in the middle and read an exchange of dialogue. Not enough to spoil anything, just enough to evaluate whether or not the conversations between characters will make me nauseous with an inaccurate portrayal of the spoken word. 

“Where the fuck did you find this kid?” Ronny asked. “He just 

hoovered my dish.”

“Reminds me of you,” a passing cook said, stockpot in his arms.

“Yo, that’s racist!” Ronny called over his shoulder. Then he pushed

The plate into Jimmy’s hands. “What’s your name?”

“Jim—”

“Gonna call you Hoover.”

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4. Finally, I read the back cover. Not closely–just skim for major themes/concepts.

Duck House…staff…fighting, loving, and aging within…disaster 

strikes…each character to confront conflicts…darkly funny…

youth and aging, parents and children…families destroy us while 

keeping us...alive.

The novel passed my initial screening with flying colors. It looked captivating. It looked like the sort of story I would read. But I didn’t buy it. I almost never bought anything from Literati. I never had the money.

It’s been four years since I first saw that book in Ann Arbor. I moved to Washington, D.C. the year following its publication and haven’t been back to Literati in ages. Most of my days are filled with classes, but, on the days that aren’t, I take the metro to work at Second Story Books–a used bookstore downtown. I spend my time there either assisting customers or shelving books (unsurprisingly). Sometimes the sections get too full to shelve anything new, and boxes of books pile up beneath the shelves they will one day find a place on. Last week, I walked in to find an overflowing box sitting on the floor near the fiction section. Passing it on my way to clock-in, I stopped mid-stride. There was turquoise on top. 

“I never thought I’d see this here,” I said to my boss, waving my trophy under his nose.

“What’s that?”

“This book. The person that wrote it worked at my favorite bookstore back in Michigan. I can’t believe it’s here.”

Upon picking up Li’s book from the cardboard box on the floor, I deviated from my ritual by immediately looking for the Author Page. 

She’s from D.C. 

I turned the book over and discovered the story’s setting to be Rockville, Maryland. I hadn’t registered that when I first picked up the book years ago–the mention of the DMV was not significant to me at the time. I thought about the way my own Author Page would look beside hers.

Parallels, like stars-aligning, happen-chance, romantic-comedy: Serendipity. 

It was at that point I started reading–on the metro, behind the front counter, in between class times–absorbing the text between turquoise. What I found was that Lillian Li had earned the “Must-Read” claims made by Time, The Wall Street Journal, Buzzfeed–hell, even Oprah. 

Analyzing chapter-ending as its own unique craft, Li is certainly a master. Chapters end not with cliff-hangers, but heartbreaks. Not large grand stabs, but minor pricks that bleed into the next page. There is nothing cliché in the suspense she creates. The line, “Without a drop of venom in his voice to make his statement untrue,” has been turning over in my mind since I first read it (Page 38). I’d never considered the additional emotion that could be evoked through identifying an absence. This quality of Li’s writing is unique in the way it utilizes what I’d label as “negative space," leaving a reader reflecting on the numbing vacancy of a missing place, person, or emotion. 

I quickly found that I couldn't relate to the specific challenges of the characters: burdened to maintain a legacy, coming from an immigrant family, wrestling with addiction, raised by a single-parent. But Li’s narrative gives readers access to the emotional depth of her characters through such an intimate presentation, revealing them at their most vulnerable with one another and also themselves. 

This immersive sensation was personally aided by the fact that I truly was there: same place, same time. 

“He got off the highway as soon as he could. He favored side, suburban streets, which, while covered with speed bumps and stop signs, were also empty of other cars and fixed lanes. His GPS scolded him repeatedly as he took a circuitous route to Janine’s place in Takoma park.”

Page 30

I’ve driven those roads, crossed those speed bumps, braked at those stop signs. I’ve parallel parked outside my friends’ Takoma house, where I’ve crashed on the couch, been picked up mid-snowstorm, thrown up before the night was close to over. I’ve stood inside this story.

I often take the red line just a stop past Bethesda to visit my cousins. I’ve made birthday dinner reservations on Georgetown Waterfront where I learned that “Detroit-style pizza” is what I’ve just been calling “deep-dish” my whole life. I’ve run through the crosswalk a block from Chinatown’s paifang, stopping to glance at the painted zodiac snake underfoot.

It’s an odd sensation, reading a book that takes place exactly where you are. Sure, I’ve read books set in places I’ve been: Ernest Hemingway’s The Torrents of Spring while in Michigan and George Orwell’s 1984 on vacation in London. But this experience was something entirely its own. My own memories slid seamlessly into the setting of Li’s novel. I caught myself believing that I’ve eaten at the fictional Beijing Duck House. Maybe I’m a regular. 

This experiential engagement was immersive to an extent that feels irreplicable. Although this particular reading of the book may be unique to me and those that live in the area, what remains relevant to all readers is that Li crafts a novel about place and people–encapsulating how the two intertwine and thrash against each other. I encountered characters with intricate flaws that made them both unlikeable, yet too complicated to hate. Feuding, foiling, falling in-and-out of love–Li's narrative is honest in its depiction of human behavior, inviting the reader to reflect on their own families, relationships, and loyalties. 

I find myself thinking about that green-brick bookstore on the corner of 4th Street and Williams Ave, the summer before my driver’s license, the small hometown I left behind three years ago, the city I moved to that seemed so big and grand when I unpacked but has since felt quite small and am sure will feel smaller still when I move on to my next home–I’ve got my heart set on New York. 

March 2022