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When her husband suddenly disappears, a young woman must uncover where he went - and who she might be without him - in this striking debut of immigration, identity, and marriage.
After another taxing day as the sole female employee at her New York City tech startup, Edwina comes home to find that her husband, Marlin, has packed up a suitcase and left. The only question now is why. Did he give up on their increasingly hopeless quest to secure their green cards and decide to return to Malaysia? Was it the death of his father that sent him into a tailspin? Or has his strange, sudden change in personality finally made Marlin and Edwina strangers to each other?
As Edwina searches the city for traces of her husband, she simultaneously sifts through memories of their relationship, hoping to discover the moment when something went wrong. All the while, a coworker is making increasingly uncomfortable advances toward her. And she can't hide the truth about Marlin's disappearance from her overbearing, eccentric mother for much longer. Soon Edwina will have to decide how much she is willing to sacrifice in order to stay in her marriage and in America.
Poignant and darkly funny, Edge Case is a searing meditation on intimacy, estrangement, and the fractured nature of identity. In this moving debut, YZ Chin explores the imperfect yet enduring relationships we hold to country and family.
"[A]n impressive debut...Edwina's wry outlook and wrestling with thoughts about what it means to make it in America will resonate with readers. Those who enjoy the work of Charles Yu should take a look." - Publishers Weekly
"Chin's novel is littered with genuinely funny moments; Edwina's voice is a chatty, engaging one that belies her depth...The novel also presents a layered view of racism...An endearingly offbeat story with particularly timely themes." - Kirkus Reviews
"One of the first great novels to examine the grinding effect of U.S. anti-immigration policies during the Trump administration...[Chin] is superb at describing the tumult of a woman being psychologically knocked about like a pachinko ball. Every chapter bears witness to Edwina's pain, befuddlement and sheer exhaustion, while also revealing her snarky sense of humor, resourcefulness, tenaciousness and capacity for love. Edge Case shows what can happen to ordinary people when they're caught up in systems beyond their control." - BookPage
"Chin writes about both the bright absurdities of modern tech-bro culture and the sharper stings of private heartache and displacement with bristling wit and vulnerability." - Entertainment Weekly
"YZ Chin's eerie and brilliant novel looks closely and tenderly at the margins of life for answers to pressing questions of love and self. Where do I belong? Who am I in the face of loss? What am I willing to do for my precarious place in this world? The result is a totally engaging and emotionally resonant story of one woman's alienation, ambivalence, defiance, and humor in the face of turmoil—I won't soon forget it and can't wait to read what Chin writes next." - Alexandra Chang, author of Days of Distraction
"A quirky story of loss and limbo, Edge Case immerses us in the worries, hopes, and absurdities of life on a work visa in America. As a woman's marriage disintegrates, YZ Chin examines her complicated, ambivalent quest for American citizenship and lays bare her indelible feelings of foreignness and unbelonging. This is a timely, intimate novel unlike any I've read." - Chia-Chia Lin, author of The Unpassing
This information about Edge Case was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
YZ Chin is the author of the story collection Though I Get Home, which won the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and the Asian/Pacific American Award For Literature honor title. Her writing has been published in Harvard Review, Gulf Coast, Somesuch Stories, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Malaysia, she now lives in New York, where she worked most recently as a software engineer.
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