Jade Song's first novel, Chlorine, landed on various awards and choice lists. Their notable sophomore title, I Love You Don't Die, is another intense examination of a solipsistic protagonist caught in the liminal space between suffering and surviving.
If Vicky could, she'd "settle down in her unmade bed for the remainder of her pointless, silly life," but her ever-changing alarm, set to five minutes before the next day's first meeting, regularly prods her it's "time to act alive." She's a copywriter at Onwards, a start-up specializing in death. Death, so to speak, keeps Vicky alive: she cocoons in a shabby sixth-floor walk-up above a Chinatown funeral parlor, comforted by an ever-growing collection of zhizas, paper offerings meant to be burned as sacrifices to the dead to make their afterlives easier, enjoyable, luxurious.
Besides work, which she does mostly from home (in bed), Vicky's only other regular interactions happen with (because of) Jen, her best (only) friend. Jen's nagging encouragement leads Vicky to respond on a dating app to "Kevin, he/him, artist and gallery assistant. Angela, she/her, organizer." The couple seeks to become a throuple, and a fulfilling threesome cautiously develops, but Vicky fights any discomfort by fleeing from her feelings. Mired in her own messiness, she doesn't recognize the potentially fatal trajectory she's on. Only love--in its myriad forms-- might offer lifesaving options.
Song's fiction benefits from their filmmaking/artist background; the camera-ready scenes are rife with exquisite visual details. They write with unhindered vulnerability, of course about death, but also about exhaustion and tenacity, resignation and struggle, abandonment and trust--and the hope that "we figure it out together." --Terry Hong