Nights When Nothing Happened, Simon Han's literary debut, tracks the complex inner workings of a Chinese American family in the lead up to and aftermath of one explosive misunderstanding. While the Chengs seem to have found solid ground in Plano, Tex., during the early 2000s--mother Patty working as a microchip designer, father Liang beginning a photography business, son Jack adjusting to America after growing up in China with his grandparents, and daughter Annabel making a friend at her new school--things are not as copacetic as they appear. Amid a perfect storm of missed connections, self-projections and gaps in communication, the family splinters under the gaze of their neighbors and supposed friends at a fraught Thanksgiving party.
Expertly navigating the multiple perspectives of all four of his primary characters, Han traces the familiar inevitability and heartbreaking disappointment of missed opportunities within personal and private relationships. Han illustrates how such minor miscommunications, especially between those who supposedly know one another best, can, over time, move from a mere hairline fracture to a shattering chasm. While still acknowledging the large-scale and systemic issues of race, class and gender that affect the Chengs' more public experiences as immigrants, the novel's gaze moves inward to the subtle and intimate results of an individual intersecting with such forces. Through poignant character insights and a brilliant sensitivity to how no one person exists independently of another, Han displays a masterful appreciation for questions of relations even, or perhaps especially, when those relations are operating within silence. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor