The Sense of Wonder

August 1, 2022

In Allen's wrap-up to the "Black Girls Must Die Exhausted" trilogy, Tabitha Walker balances new motherhood, new job possibilities, new friendship issues, and an ultimatum from boyfriend Marc about their relationship, and she's beginning to wonder if she really believes that Black Girls Must Have It All (75,000-copy paperback and 20,000-copy hardcover first printing). In Central Places, a debut from journalist Cai, Audrey Zhou left Hickory Grove, IL, for a big-deal job in Manhattan but is returning home to introduce star-worthy fianc� Ben to her hectoring parents and ignored friends; she also reconnects with laidback Kyle, the only person who ever understood her. DeFino moves from The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers (And Their Muses) to Varina Palladino's Jersey Italian Love Story, which features a widow whose mother and daughter conspire to get her dating again (50,000-copy first printing). In the New York Times best-selling Harper's Back in a Spell, puissant witch Nineve Blackmoore has been abandoned at the altar by her fianc�e and ends up on an awkward and ultimately antagonistic first date with nonbinary townie Morty Gutierrez (angry that her family wants to buy out his pub); then Morty unexpectedly starts acquiring magical powers. In Lipman's genre-blending Ms. Demeanor, big-deal lawyer Jane Morgan loses both career and social life after a busybody neighbor reports her for having hot sex on the rooftop of her New York apartment building, then faces more trouble when the neighbor winds up poisoned and leaves a note implicating Jane (100,000-copy first printing). From Pen/Faulkner finalist Salesses, The Sense of Wonder stars Won Lee, the first Asian American in the NBA, whose seven-game winning streak wins him the moniker "The Wonder"--all witnessed by sportswriter Robert Sung and studio producer Carrie Kang, with whom Won launches a relationship (50,000-copy first printing). In debuter Shroff's The Bandit Queens, a young Indian woman named Geeta is suspected of killing her long-vanished husband, which proves beneficial--no one wants to cross her--and then uncomfortable as other women push her for advice on getting rid of their husbands. After surviving his car's plunge off a cliff in Normandy, Charles Vincent, Steel's latest protagonist, is nursed back to health by a kind woman he stumbles across in a nearby cabin and realizes that he could vanish from his unhappy life Without a Trace. In Zigman's Small World, Joyce invites sister Lydia to move into her Cambridge apartment (if only temporarily) when Lydia returns east from California, but the two divorcees find their relationship disrupted by memories of their deceased sister (60,000-copy first printing).

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Starred review from October 10, 2022
Novelist and critic Salesses (Craft in the Real World) offers a brilliant and scathing chronicle of two Asian Americans as they try to find their place in contemporary sports and media. As the first Asian American in the NBA, Korean American Won Lee is poised to become a star after he steps in for his injured Knicks teammate Paul Burton (nicknamed “Powerball!”), his winning streak earning him the nickname “the Wonder.” But he’s also confronted by casual and at times cutting racism from teammates, coaches, and fans, as well as professional jealousy from an ESPN reporter, Robert Sung, who played high school ball with Powerball! and used to imagine himself in Won’s shoes. Meanwhile, Won’s girlfriend, Carrie, is fighting an uphill battle in her efforts to bring Korean television dramas to an American market. Using language that is hilarious, caustic, and poignant, Salesses effectively interrogates whether and how Asians can contribute to American celebrity culture without meeting the same old racism in return. Robert’s profile of Won, for instance, ends up with a reference to China in the headline, and when Carrie risks pitching a K-drama with American characters, an executive asks if she can “hear how that sounds like you don’t know what you’re doing.” Incorporating both Won and Carrie’s perspectives while also weaving in plots and scripts from K-dramas, Salesses fills the page with all the bold, kinetic confidence of an athlete striding onto the court. Agent: Ayesha Pande, Ayesha Pande Literary.

November 15, 2022
Romance and drama bloom around the NBA's sole Asian American player. For his fourth novel, Salesses takes some inspiration from the real-life story of Jeremy Lin, the Taiwanese American basketball player whose brief but phenomenal run for the New York Knicks in 2012 sparked a "Linsanity" craze. Here the player is Won Lee, an underappreciated Korean American point guard for the Knicks who capitalizes on a star player's injury to lead a winning streak that the media punningly dubs the Wonder. Salesses alternates narration between Won and his girlfriend, Carrie, who's a producer for K-dramas, Korean soap operas that have complex plots but operate within fairly rigid tropes As the Wonder inevitably fizzles, various dramas intensify, making the story a kind of K-drama itself. Won and Carrie are enmeshed in conflicts with an Asian American sports journalist manipulating the "Wonder" narrative, the injured Knicks star (nicknamed Powerball!), and both of their partners; accusations of infidelity abound. Woven among these troubles are a few of those K-drama tropes, not just boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, but more abstract matters of fate. ("K-drama shines," Salesses writes, "in the tension between certainty and wonder.") In time, Carrie tries to get a basketball-themed K-drama off the ground, which creates its own set of complications. Salesses' story is admirably multilayered, blending smarts about basketball, television, and the varying shades of anti-Asian racism, though he's less persuasive in arguing that incredible plot twists--convenient deaths and resurrections, stock setbacks, and heartfelt reunions--are more true to life than the tropes suggest. Still, Salesses takes his source material from both basketball and TV seriously, and his storytelling is crisp while avoiding easy frothiness. A smart, very meta take on love, sports, race, and media.

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November 1, 2022
Salesses' (Disappear Doppelg�nger Disappear, 2020) third work of fiction is a remarkable novel of love, obstacles, and possibilities. Won Lee has just joined the Knicks, making him the only Asian American player in the NBA. Sports journalist and Korean adoptee Robert Sung sees Won as the player he could have been if his career hadn't been derailed by an injury. Paul Burton, known as Powerball!, is Won's idol and the superstar of the Knicks. Sung is fixated on Powerball! and Powerball!'s wife, Brit, whom he has loved since high school. Meanwhile, Won's girlfriend, Carrie, is trying to produce her own Korean drama about a basketball star and the sports journalist who ruins his career. When an injury puts Powerball! on the bench, Won leads the team in a winning streak that the media dubs ""The Wonder."" However, despite his talents, Won becomes a pawn in the feud between Sung and Powerball! over Brit. Told from Won's and Carrie's perspectives, and interspersed with sections from Carrie's K-dramas, The Sense of Wonder explores multiple Korean American experiences through vivid, unforgettable characters.

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