Unprecedented Times

by Malavika Kannan

Malavika Kannan establishes herself as the literary voice of Gen Z in this piercing coming-of-age narrative

Which comes experience or narrative? Rishi thinks she knows the answer as she arrives on campus for her first year at Stanford. Her narrative is set—she’s going to leave behind the strict trappings of her Indian-American childhood in Florida, embrace her queer identity, experiment with love, and write all about it. Within a few months, she gets a new tattoo, makes her first real best friend, falls in love with her un-labeled situationship, and even gets her heart broken. Rishi’s first semester Asian American Autofiction final practically writes itself.

What is not a part of Rishi’s plan, however, is the onset of the COVID pandemic. As the outside world becomes a terrifying place, she finds more and more solace in the friendships she’s made. In lieu of virtual college, Rishi and her classmates join a farm collective and grapple with America’s political situation and growing disillusionment…along with sexual tension and responsibility. It’s only when those relationships, too, start fracturing under the stress of careless decisions, unrequited crushes, jealousies, and, yes, the unprecedented times, that Rishi begins to question her own story.

Unprecedented Times captures the beauty, frustration, love, and pain that exists in relationships between best friends, between lovers, between mothers and daughters, and between storytellers and themselves. Malavika Kannan’s fresh, arresting novel captures the excitement and the terror of modern young adulthood through the eyes of an unforgettable, flawed, and lovable narrator.

Genres: Fiction, Queer, Contemporary, LGBT, Literary Fiction, Coming Of Age, Adult

352 pages, Paperback

First published August 18, 2026

Reviews

[Olivia]

2.5⭐️ thank you to Netgalley for the ARC. Frustrating. But it IS very funny to have your self insert character in your navel gaze-y autofiction novel state publicly that they are pro-navel gazing in the first 20 pages. That got a chuckle out of me.

This did not work for me as a meta-commentary on autofiction or as a COVID coming of age as the blurb suggests. While there are some interesting vignettes, they feel adrift in the rest of the low-plot stream-of-consciousness narrative in which our central character learns nothing and does not grow at all (except the final chapter, the strongest part of the book, which ends abruptly) These topics and experiences might be better synthesized in a collection of personal essays or short stories. Otherwise, this feels more akin to a self-indulgent glamorized diary than a work of literary fiction.

I say this with grace: Unprecedented Times, like most of Kannan’s other work I have read, feels unripe. This feels like an early draft rushed to publication in the immediate aftermath of her experiences, with no opportunity to gain the distance and perspective that this book desperately needs. That’s not to say it’s HORRIBLE, or that she is untalented, there’s good stuff here. I just wish I read it later in her career, when she was ready to kill her darlings. I wish she had an editor willing to tease the strengths out, because they ARE here. The marketing for her litfic debut (and for a lot of her other stuff) relies on “the unfiltered mind of Gen Z” element that misses the real value of her perspective, which does not derive from her youth. (If anything, the market is over saturated with Gen Z stream of consciousness opinion, it’s every corner of the internet, all the time. I say this as a zillennial) There are some interesting arguments and lyrical turns of phrase, but it’s bogged down in a lot of pithy, self-aggrandizing nothingness.

Does a story have to mean something? Does Rishi (and Kannan) have to find narrative meaning in her experiences for them to be worthwhile? It’s an underbaked thesis. If your argument is that it means nothing, surprise! It now has the meaning and purpose of declaring not all experiences have narrative meaning. Really, you need to have an editor who can call you out on shit like this. Is it worthwhile? Decide for yourself.

Again, all the love and light in my heart to this author, but if all the characters/plot points are from your real life with the serial numbers filed off AND you refuse to engage with the themes to pluck meaning from the experiences, why bother to write fiction at all? Why not a blogpost, a tweet, an essay, a memoir? If you don’t care to find a point to all of this after 352 pages, why the fuck should I?

TLDR: Best of luck to this ambitious young writer, but I’m uninterested in reading every ham-fisted first draft raced to publication that paves her way.

[Tell]

Brilliant, clear-eyed, funny. The kids are self-aware and kind of awful and kind of genius. I loved this book about Rishi, a self-serious Gen Z entering college right as the pandemic hits. This is a funny, biting novel about exploring yourself, testing boundaries, being porous, meeting people you think you’ll love forever at eighteen years old, and loss.

Trigger warnings for COVID and Gen Z faux moralism, but I loved the way Kannan pointed a laser at the defensive usage of social justice language by young people grasping for moral truths in an immoral world. She gets it.

[Malavika Kannan]

I hope you like it!

[cyd]

4.75
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review. This book was so amazing I am actually speechless. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect going into it but it had a pretty cover and the synopsis sounded interesting so i figured why not. I was not expecting to enjoy this book so much. I am often wary when reading books revolving around the pandemic because they never really capture what it felt like going through that time in a way that feels worth it. This book explored the pandemic and its effects on people without it seeming unnatural. The characters in this book were messy and real and relatable. Reading this made me forget I was reading it felt like watching an intimate home diary of someone’s life. I don’t even have the words to explain how much I loved this but I seriously recommend it.

[City Elf Reader (Ryan)]

The writing in this felt so self important, immature, and faux-insightful, like reading the twitter timeline (or substack) of the worst person you know. It reads like a helplessly online buzzfeed article for the post millennial generation. I couldn’t subject myself to any more of it omfg.

[Kimmy]

dnf'ing at ~20% bc i lived this exact kind of insufferable gen z college experience and i don't feel the need to revisit it for 300+ pages. this is a great cultural document; i'll give it that.

[Lily ♡]

The problem with autofiction is that sometimes the author’s life isn’t nearly as interesting as they think it is.

Things I liked:

- Rishi being a burnt out youth climate activist. Really interesting and I wish we had more ruminations on this and how it affects her day to day life.

- Time spent on the farming co-op. I could only take so much of the run-of-the-mill Gen Z characters in run-of-the-mill Gen Z places like college or NYC. The setting had so much potential! (It did also make me wish I was just reading Alison Bechdel’s Spent, which is an actually interesting and well written autofiction about queers on a farm during the pandemic)

- Solid pacing. I liked the distinct acts and the writer’s ability to skip time without it being disorienting or seemingly unnecessary.

Things I didn’t:

-The characters. Jesus Christ, the characters. Maybe the problem is that I know these people way too well. I spent too much time in college surrounded by filthy rich kids with leftist politics and cliques and infighting. Just a personal issue for me I guess but I did not like spending time with any of them. I love an unlikable character, but it has too be purposeful and well done. This was not.

- Rishi’s voice and meme references. Jesus Christ the meme references. Maybe it would be better if I was less online and didn’t know that the quilt remarks were ripped off of twitter but unfortunately I did know this and I couldn’t help but cringe, like when someone makes a joke you read online three weeks ago and you just have to fake laugh. I understand that it’s time appropriate for the pandemic but was very frustrating for me to read.

- The way privilege is addressed in the story. It’s mentioned often (slay), comparing dynamics and characters mentioning, but doing nothing to offset, their privilege, both racial and economic. I love a story with evil rich characters, and I feel like if this was more well written/edited it could be a stronger commentary on how although these kids are aware and guilty of their privilege, they do nothing to help others. That’s real, that’s believable, but I worry that many readers will not understand this, as it was very muddled.



Anyways it’s the best cover art I’ve seen in a while. I also read that the author thinks you can just choose to be a lesbian and wahoo boy I could definitely tell from the book.

[Kaleigh]

A frustrating read that I'll chalk up at least halfway to myself not fully reading the description. This is a covid lockdown novel, which is a time period I'm completely burnt out on. It follows a privileged and immature college freshman through the pandemic—from move-in in 2019 to ending up on a culty homestead with a bunch of larpers by the end.

At first it scratched my post-The Idiot campus novel craving that I get every year around this time. Even though it was more YA-coded than litfic, I was still vibing with the culture shock of being around so many smart and intimidating people, the dating drama, and the parental tensions that come with being independent for the first time. But then the covid stuff happened and it all became very cringe and "woke 1." There's not much of a plot or character development and the writing isn't interesting or funny enough to justify that choice. It could almost be a satire but I see it's actually autofiction? Anyway, glad to be done with it.

The audiobook narration was phenomenal and authentic, I thought it was read by the author until now I see that it's not.

[Sophie]

I’m not sure if this book is objectively good but it almost made me sick how much I related to it. I’m feeling parasocial towards the author now, that’s how serious it is. I’m feeling so many intense feelings and remembering things I haven’t thought about since my first year and the pandemic. Basically this book looked at the inside of my soul and so yeah feeling normal about that <3

[Amarah H-S]

read my review here! https://thetorontoreview.ca/malavika-...

[Kennedy Cole]

What an incredible read! I flew through this and thoroughly enjoyed the formatting. Normally, I don’t love such long, seamless chunks of texts, but I think it worked well for this novel. This story was heartbreaking, and very relatable as a recent college graduate who’s also been on both sides of the friendship breakup. I think Rishi’s character arc and overall development was written really well. I’d give this 4.5 stars, but round it down to 4 simply because this is a surprisingly dark story that I don’t think I’ll read again, but still thoroughly enjoyed.

[Rob Boylan]

DNF

Thank you to Henry Holt for the chance to read this early, but this book was not for me. That's fine. Not every book should be, or needs to be, for every reader (especially not old white guys -- however enlightened they like to think they are).

My feeling is that this book (her second, but first adult book) came too soon in life for this writer. I think back to my own writing in my twenties and my shoulders shrivel at the idea of anyone having read it, let alone having it published by a mainstream publisher. At not being able to get every last copy back. 

I also felt like her editor failed her a little bit? It's another thing I think back on, where I've felt like an editor could have protected me from myself. Yes, the writer has to write and you can't impede that, but is it not an abdication of duty to not advise, “hey, you already used ‘hearty’ on page 8, lets think of something besides ‘heartily’ for page 9”? Those are the little things they explicitly make red felt pens for. 

I really did have high hopes for this because the cover is absolutely incredible (the ARC did not have the artist or designer info filed out yet), but I just couldn't make it very far. It's a young person's book, and I've got clouds to argue with.

[Sarah Wahl]

*I finally got around to properly reviewing this book lol. Enjoy!*

I feel like I have to preface this review by saying that I am Gen Z, and I did, in fact, go to college during the global pandemic in 2020. More specifically, I started my freshman year of college with mask mandates, social distancing, and no extracurricular activities. I completely understand that this is a unique experience that not many others will have, unless there is some other global pandemic that occurs. I feel that if I were an author, I would also be compelled to write about my time during COVID. I also understand that everyone who has experienced the COVID-19 pandemic has a very different life than everyone else. My own mom is immunocompromised, so we took as many precautions as we could have to make sure she was safe, but I know that was not the case for a majority of people. That said, I think that having a perspective such as Rishi's is important; however, it was not executed in the right way, which made it difficult to give this book more than 2 stars.

The first qualm that I found with the story is that it seems like such a short time for reflection. This work is autofiction, so some parts of the book are based on Malavika's own experience during the pandemic. The start of COVID happened in 2020, which is only 6 years ago. The crazier thing is that there are still active cases of COVID happening, according to the CDC's website. It could have been just how I interpreted the writing, but it felt like Rishi, and in turn Kannan, didn't take the pandemic very seriously. It felt as if she believed that the worst of it was over. The difficult part about this is that it is autofiction! There is clearly a connection between how the character reacted and how Kannan felt about her own experience during COVID. Overall, it just felt as if COVID wasn't taken seriously, which I didn't appreciate. I understand that we are all naive and self-centered, but to publish something where a huge aspect of the book is about the global pandemic and then write how you didn't take it seriously feels a bit off. I also find it hard to believe that in the 5-ish years between COVID starting and the present, Kannan was able to do enough reflection to make her autofiction book indicate her growth and understanding. I feel that it is still too recent an event to thoroughly self-reflect on what occurred and how it made you feel, but that is just my personal opinion.

Another qualm that I had with the story was that it seemed there was no true point to what was being said. There was reflection on Rishi's part occasionally, but other than that, there was no overarching message of the book. The book can be summarized as such: Rishi goes to an Ivy League school with a bunch of privileged students, becomes very close with her roommate, COVID happens, moves to a farm commune as a gap year, realizes she might have feelings for said roommate, has a friendship breakup and leaves the commune, moves to NYC, moves home, and the end. You would think that lessons would be learned throughout all of this, but that did not seem to be the case. There were times in which Rishi did do some self-reflection, but every time she started, she seemed to slip back again to her old ways. One of the ways that I saw this happening was with her sexuality. In the book, Rishi identifies as a lesbian at one point, which helps her realize her feelings for her roommate/friend. After that goes poorly and they "break up," Rishi starts going on dates with guys because she claims they can't hurt her as her former roommate/friend did, but she is clearly not enjoying her time on those dates. Instead of doing any more reflection about her actions, she continues going on these dates, knowing that they are causing her emotional distress/she is using these men to fill the void of her romantic life. To me, I felt like I was just reading the diary of someone who doesn't think they have ever done anything wrong, as no self-reflection was completed.

Truthfully, there is more that I could say about what I didn't like, but I will restrain myself from writing any more huge paragraphs. I applaud Malavika Kannan for putting her story out there on the market and showing that being in your 20s is a time of messiness and growth, which is why I give this book 2 stars instead of one. Despite some of the language being used being too mainstream and being a bit cringey to read in a few years, I did laugh a lot when reading this book because of the way things were said. It felt like some pieces of dialogue were pulled straight from my own 2020 college experience. I do wish that this book was just edited down a bit more and that Kannan took some more time to hone her craft. Maybe this story would have been better told in a few years and not now, but that is just my prerogative!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Megan Beauregard]

Thank you to Henry Holt & Co. and NetGalley for the ARC!

This coming of age novel, set during the "unprecedented time" of our generation, follows a young queer burned-out activist during her first year of college and the onset of the Covid pandemic. I worried I might see too much of myself in this novel - or worse, that I wouldn't be able to get through it because of the proximity of Covid quarantine, despite the 6 years that have passed. Instead, I was drawn into the messy inner life of a young woman trying to navigate major life transitions, and failing miserably. Marked with witty quips, one-liners, and Gen-Z slang, the book sometimes slides too far into humor and away from depth, character development, and reflection. The intensity and emotional impact gets lost when every difficult moment doesn't get a chance to stick the landing before it turns into a punchline.

The novel brought up a lot of prevalent topics: the Covid pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, climate change and climate activism, farm and manual labor, and the early stages of figuring out your sexuality. For a narrator focused on writing and making a difference, with a background in climate activism, I expected the main character to "practice what she preached," or explore the way these topics touched her life. How does a climate activist spend a gap year working on a farm, but doesn't explore the impact of that labor, communal living, or the effects of climate change on farming? What does it mean for her friend/love interest, the daughter of CDC workers on the front lines of the pandemic, to accompany her to a NYC bar at the height of Covid? What does it mean for a queer woman who declares to "hate men" to only seek out sex with men when she is feeling bored or self-destructive? This book had so much potential, but fell flat.

If you seek out unreliable, complicated, and unapologetic main characters, then Unprecedented Times by Malavika Kannan is your kind of book! There is a distance between the main character and everyone else in the story - this unreliable narrator has a skewed perspective of events and her role in them. Unfortunately, it was hard for me to read as an adult watching this teenager make the worst mistakes of their life and then not learn anything or take any responsibility for her actions. I feel like I aged out of the demographic that would enjoy this book - 10 years ago it would have been perfect for the teenager I was: someone struggling to find friendships that fit, coming into my queerness, and becoming angry with the injustices of the world we live in.

Anyone who: deflects trauma with humor, is still figuring out their sexuality, has a group of queer misfit friends, and has definitely stalked their ex-situationship on social media: this book is for you!

[Sherry Moyer]

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗦
Rishi arrives at Stanford ready for her life to begin. Out from under the burden of her Asian mother’s love, she wants to pursue a degree in literature so she can write books and she wants to have a lot of gay sex.

Upon meeting her roommate, Georgia, Rishi is immediately smitten - and the two form a bond that looks like, feels like love. They share everything, processing every action and emotion with each other.

And then it’s March of 2020 and the world shuts down.

After a few painful months at home, Rishi and her group of friends from Stanford - including Georgia - decide to join a farm collective in the mountains of rural Pennsylvania. But once there, relationships become trickier to navigate, choices are made, and Rishi’s life changes dramatically.

𝗙𝗘𝗘𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗚𝗦
Rishi is self centered and borders on narcissistic behavior throughout the story. She feels entitled and believes that simply telling someone she’s sorry should be enough to absolve her of what’s happened. She struggles with her overbearing mother without once really trying to understand her motivations.

I found her difficult to like.

And then I discovered this is autofiction, meaning much of this is based on real situations and feelings, but fictionalized to help the author deal with complex emotions. And that definitely confused the plot for me.

I don’t know. It was a lot. I struggled to get into it, thoroughly enjoyed the middle half, and then was extremely frustrated by the ending.

𝗩𝗜𝗕𝗘 𝗖𝗛𝗘𝗖𝗞
Gen Z behaving like fictionalized Gen Zers.

𝗥𝗘𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗗
That’s up to you. I found Rishi difficult and the selfishness to be overwhelming at times. It’s character driven and complex.

Lots of TWs - DM me or check them out online.

3.5⭐️

[Elin Isaksson]

Loved it! A coming of age story for the Gen Z idealists who had to experience a lot of historic events in a quick succession. Life and people are hard. The audio book was amazing.

[Hanner]

Compulsively readable as scrolling TikTok 2020 style lol

And Rishi is 2020; she’s furious, she’s exhausted, she’s overinformed and touch starved. Doing her best in an impossible era to come of age into. She’s also the queer daughter of Indian immigrants, marching into an unprecedented future with a knife for a tongue and a tender hand reaching back for her mother’s. She’s bristly and annoying and completely lovable.

[Naima]

I’m just gonna be real I felt sooo cool reading an ARC of this book (thanks Netgalley!) while the author was the subject of the latest major niche queer internet discourse.

This book was a very true and real story about people who went to college in the year 2019. Everything cringey about it was unfortunately actually just accurate. Similar to another review I read on here, I did sort of wish the main character would go through more personal growth and self reflection than she did—but who’s to say that’s not realistic too? Yet another book that had more vibes than plot, but the drama and mess of it all kept me turning the pages.

[Seairra Mortellaro]

Unfortunately, this book was not my cup of tea, mainly because of the writing style. It felt very unpolished and was hard to read at times. The humor was too millenial-ish for me personally, which doesn't really match up with the marketing material claiming that Kannan is "the literary voice of Gen-Z". I can't definitively speak to the quality of the book as a whole, as I did not finish it, and these issues are specific to my preferences rather than definite flaws. So if you don't mind a very casual writing style and millennial memes, you might like this book.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Kaley Murphy]

Rishi is so real, I’ve been friends with her, I’ve been her, I’ve hated her, I’ve loved her. I can’t thank Malavika Kannan enough for putting this story into the world. One of my top 3 books of all time!

[Sara]

As I first starting reading, I had doubts about this book. I didn’t find the first section about Rishi’s college experience terribly interesting. I think stories about college freshmen getting drunk and laid for the first time are kind of like dreams — only interesting to the person telling them. It also took a bit of time for me to get used the prose, which was a little too casual. I don’t necessarily like when a book sounds like how an author talks — I prefer the prose to be more literary. Some of the sentences felt like they were pulled directly from the author’s Twitter drafts. I also realized I have complicated feelings about auto fiction. I saw another review citing Toni Morrison, who apparently tell hers students NOT to write what you know, and I also see why she would give that advice. HOWEVER, as the book continued, I settled more into the style and the characters. I was surprised by how not-annoying I found a book about the pandemic to be, so I think that’s an impressive feat. The last third of the book was especially strong. Overall, I think this was a successful portrayal of a very specific type of online, Gen-Z leftist, and I liked her transformation over the course of the novel. I related to Rishi’s expansion of political consciousness, and the way she loved others fiercely in a way that wasn’t aways accepted well. I think Rishi's relationship with her mom was one of the strongest elements of the book, though I wish that had been a little bit more present in the latter half. Ultimately I would recommend it, but only to certain friends who I know wouldn’t find the characters too annoying.

[Naori]

This advanced reader’s copy provided by NetGalley.

Thank you NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for this advance reader’s audiobook of Malavika Kannan’s novel Unprecedented Times in exchange for an honest review. My words are my own.

This novel is a stream of consciousness narrative detailing the central character Rishi’s experiences from the summer before her freshman year of college until shortly after she turns twenty. Rishi is an Indian-American freshman at Stanford University whose college career gets derailed by COVID and complicated by multiple relationships. The book is a linear play by play of the events and emotions Rishi experiences throughout that timeline. The character repeatedly forwards the question: does all writing have to have meaning or can meaning be found in just the act of writing itself? As the main character is also a writer asking this question, it seems this is a meta-narrative whereby the author is asking this question as well.

My answer as a reader, reviewer, writer and professor is yes: writing is deeply valuable just for the performance of engaging in it, and meaning can be sought in the ascribed words later. However, this is a published piece of writing that is being marketed as fiction, not as memoir or journalistic. For that reason, the meandering stream of consciousness format that is used for the purpose of asking questions and listening to the echoes, isn’t really what some people would define as a novel. The format may not make sense as a work of fiction, but that definition is of course subjective. Many reviewers have talked about the dissonance between Gen Z communication and other writing. However, this is not the only time that we have gone through a renaissance of writing style wherein free verse shakes up the literary community, and does so successfully. I am thinking of recent YA works by young women of color that are written entirely in poetic verse. I don’t think alternative writing styles aren’t capable of success. However, even stream of consciousness observatory narratives fall apart if there is not clean writing, good editing, and a wariness about repetition.

Rather than try to understand this piece based on genre I’m turning to authorial perspective. The main character repeatedly suggests that she is narrating all of her experiences for her best friend in order to examine them. She is questioning her experiences in order to better understand herself and the world she is living in. I believe this is her stated “thesis”. However, I struggled with the continuity of the fictional character’s persona and the conclusions she made. She was a serious environmental activist, had some very mature experiences politically, is surrounded by queer people of color (many of them second generation), and is taking some pretty academically alternative courses at Stanford. So part of why this didn’t work for me is because I couldn’t believe how few connections she was able to make regarding her privilege, the motivations of her mother’s behavior, how much class dissonance was happening around her, etc. If this was an average 18 year old who had been sheltered with none of these experiences, I’d understand if they were oblivious to these things. However to have a character like this, hundreds of pages into the book, still be blind to why her friend wants to split a bill when their family survives on a taxi cab business? It was very incongruous. This was also true of her summations of her mother’s anxieties; as she reflects on the ways her immigrant mother’s life is vastly different from hers she still never comprehends her behavior. The author also compiles a definition of love based on her mother’s actions toward her: waiting up at night, showing belonging, calling her daily, cooking for her - the type of consistency she doesn’t find in others. However, her conclusions seem off base; she is exploring her sexuality with multiple partners because her mother couldn’t, or she is living a very liberal, repercussion-free life because her mother’s was restricted. I had a hard time understanding how a character with this much exposure to diversity and political consciousness wouldn’t make the connection that her family’s discontent with her choice to leave college and live on a farm was because two generations before her sacrificed greatly to get away from hand-to-mouth living. In fact, none of her group of friends made the clear conclusion that historically and currently, people who farm do not have social mobility or wealth. I generally just struggled with the believability of this character/cast of characters and their lack of growth throughout the book. In terms of the narrator, Tara Raani, she couldn’t have sold the voice of a teenage, self observant, often dramatic young woman any better. Inflection, incredulity, passion, vocal inflection - it was all there. I initially thought the author herself was reading it.

So, I don’t believe Hanan’s writing is revolutionary because it depicts the style of her generation. I do agree that this is a book that will resonate with some readers more than others because it is very personal and very specific. This book doesn’t allow the reader to have the distance that most fiction does in order to imagine a world. This feels like memoir writing; you either identify with the character on a personal level from your own experience and communicate style, or you don’t. Publishing a long book simply to figure out which is more important, the experience of writing or the narrative itself, is a gamble. However, if this was an experiment in that alone, it could’ve been successful with a clearer preposition, more decisive writing and editorial clarity.

I do want to make this clause in my review: this is a writer publishing professionally at the age of 17. I highly doubt that the community of people, myself included, who are reviewing her work have done that. If I were to look back at my writing at her age I would cringe at what it sounded like. While I wouldn’t recommend this book to others, I certainly celebrate this writer’s emergent possibilities, and I look forward to seeing how her writing develops. Hannan is doing something hardly any of her reviewers could do and it is much easier to write a review than it is to write a book. We need to be honest; unless the audience for this book is Helen Oyeyemi and the few other 17-year-old authors, we are all pretty much high school athletes judging a bronze medal Olympian. With the amount of experience, education and practice she’s had, I don’t doubt in time Kannan will take home the gold.

[Anoushka]

Edit 09.17.26 - finished

I am so sleep deprived so forgive me for incoherence but I am thinking about the class I took on secrets + revelation last year and our discussions re: the teleology of writing as the creation of a standalone artistic text vs. as a way to process the painful occurrences of one's life. This takes a turn in its final act that reveals that this novel is the result of the latter as well as the former. Feels impossible to discuss without acknowledging the parts of this that must have been hard to write, and by extension, how writing must have saved her. But it would also sell Kannan short to discuss her work as completely diaristic so I will do my best to consider this the way we discussed Sad Tiger and other memoirs of trauma, which is to say to compassionately critique it on its artistic merit.

M is right that the second half is superior to the first half. When I sunk into the voice and began to treat the protag as the messiest acquaintance I knew talking into my ear this became quite entertaining and fulfilled my college gossip void (crazy real depictions of co-dependent queer friendships and their brutal implosions). Kannan is a talented writer who overexplains herself approximately half the time. A lot of the pleasure of this for me was recognizing, the way one does in a yearbook, the particular experiences that resemble my own. To an extent this is a sort of an empty pleasure to me in that it is fleeting and doesn't necessarily interpret my experience back to me in a new way but faithfully reflects it all the same. But it can feel good from time to time to look in a mirror.

The turn is bleak but also some of the novel's best writing. To the extent that it can be discussed as a narrative choice I am mixed on its inclusion/execution. We needed two hundred more pages to deal with the fallout of this event. As it stands it sort of runs into shock value meant to demonstrate the meaninglessness of the project of narrativization; there is room in the existing plot to better and more subtly explore this without relying on this turn. The shock of it all can veer into cop-out territory. The Catcher in the Rye comparisons are apt because this is a loss of innocence narrative but Catcher sets itself up for success by laying the foundation for it in the beginning. I'm sort of left cold by the handling of it here. It seems possible that Kannan simply could not write more after this event because she herself doesn't know what comes next; I found myself wondering, as I had throughout the reading of this, what would have happened if she had been allowed to sit on this for a few more years, maybe letting it rest, returning to it with more hindsight (confirmation bias re: my frontal lobe theory). However much this text might be an expression of her pain and the writing of it as a way to face it, as a published novel it becomes an artistic object, and each writing choice becomes an intentional, creative one; there's a lack of coherence here that I don't feel like I can fault her for but that warps the novel all the same.
---
og review - DNF
sorry to everybody i sped thru the first half of this but could not stand the voice

[Maya]

Ok obviously people are going to hate this for many good and valid reasons that i concur with & also i am choosing for myself to believe that Kannan is self aware tho my experience with her Substack writing indicates to me that Rishi's attitudes are more autofiction than fiction. however i sobbed my way through most of this. Rishi sucks and is immensely frustrating and annoying and sanctimonious and most of her struggles seem karmically self wrought but also lost on her but at the same time she rings so true like something beamed directly from my own heart- for the last third of the book i sat in my bathtub like i did in the thorniest of high school quarantine years and wept and wept and wept for the Rishi that lives somewhere inside me. AMMA, HOW CAN I TELL YOU WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME? Idk i'll ponder on this and add more to the review later. Probably will cry some more.

[Sana]

This was the most self-insert, aggressively Gen-Z novel I’ve ever read – and I mean that as the highest compliment possible. I absolutely loved it.

This book was written like a perfect stream of consciousness, with painfully specific observations, and ridiculous insight. It was the most coming-of-age book ever. I’m describing it in hyperboles because the author does the exact same thing.

What I loved most was how genuinely realistic and funny it felt. The mother-daughter interactions, the awkwardness of college life, the strange emotional whiplash of leaving your hometown for a bright, shiny, prestigious university: it all felt incredibly familiar. The fact that the protagonist is an Indian American girl made it hit even harder for me specifically, and I can imagine this book will be a go-to for others with the same identity.

I also really loved the book’s commentary on friendship, especially the almost accidental codependence that can develop in college. Not every part worked perfectly for me, and there were definitely moments that felt a little flat. But honestly, this was the kind of book where I could imagine someone finding themselves in almost every single page. All in all, I loved this book. It was fun, painfully relatable, and just the right amount of unhinged.

[krezzia]

i did in fact finish the book.

this was my first auto fiction. the acknowledgments framing the james baldwin’s reason to write (something ive also been pondering a lot lately) makes sense why kannan wrote this book; however, because of our shared age & lives experiences, nothing feels novel, but more affirming? everything is so literal & ik most likely happened, so I am at a loss of words for how I exactly feel abt consuming this type of literature.

I did enjoy reading it & it was a not so bad take on covid media (which i notoriously dislike). I wonder how this book will age overtime. There was so much media documentation during that time period, i wonder if it will be as valued looking back as other historic periods of history (where documentation lacked greatly).

[Tara]

Honestly? I really loved this book. I'm maybe not the target audience demographically, but spiritually? Yes. I think this is going to hit for those folks who want a more young version of "weird girl lit" (without horror elements) with a queer and South Asian messy, self-searching protagonist who's toxic to herself and friends sometimes while she's learning how to human in a world outside her small town Florida). Rishi's messy! And I love that! Mostly unapologetically messy, finding clever ways to defend her actions all the time (even though we as readers probably know better but what's a 19 year old doing except constantly self-searching for self-identity? Whether that's as "I think I'm a lesbian, but I'm exploring the data points (by doing one-night stands with men)," or falling desperately in love with your best friend in a way that's so true to the queer female experience or having your heart broken by a vaunted teacher's critique or, especially, the complex relationship with your mother where you want the bare minimum, if that, to do with her and her smothering ways until those moments when you just want your mother. Even though I'm not like Rishi outside of being queer and from the United States, it's (unfortunately) extremely relatable in those feelings of needing to be separate from your family, and the very intense friendships a young queer person has that border, and cross the border, outside of friendship. This is also the book I'd recommend first, without pause, when trying to explain to people what "bisexual homoromantic" means.

I think it's not so much A COVID Book as one might expect - we know Rishi and her college experience for a full year before those events of March 2020 and what follows, and of course we get to and through that, but the story is WELL underway by then. Even those long months themselves feel like a much smaller part of the story - Stanford closes, Rishi's at home, Rishi and her friends are more or less isolated on a homestead farm (less trad wife more, poly commune that the kids don't really get involved with thankfully), one person in the story is affected health-wise but from a distance, mostly - I know some friends who are straight up like, "I don't want to read any book that mentions/involves COVID yet" so this is your warning - it's contemporary fiction that doesn't ignore it, but it's also much less than expected with what goes on during that year and a half-ish.

What was the huge standout to me in this novel was the NARRATION. Tara Raani was FANTASTIC, code switching in every available opportunity between cynical Rishi, her immigrant parents, her white roommate/best friend/her queer friends/her more 'posh' friend from India, et cetera. It was more than just a lovely set of accents in my ears, but a whole style of speaking and really just vibe brought to each character. Adding to my: I will listen to anything narrated by you list.

tl;dr this was great, greatest probably in audio, happy to be here. Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the ALC for review!

[Ellen]

This literary fiction coming of age novel took me a minute to get into. It’s written by a Gen Z author for Gen Z readers. I’m a parent of Gen Z’ers. However, once the setting was established and I got to know the characters, I felt more invested and ended up loving this read. The book had me remembering my college years, finding the similarities in what is a time of striving for independence and creating one's future as well as the differences in culture and expectations of young adults today versus 35 years ago.

Kannan is extremely observant and able to describe things in a smoothly vivid way. I like her writing style and her sense of humor. Rishi, our protagonist, comes across as a flawed but still likable character. This book seems to be auto fiction, and Rishi is taking a class on auto fiction, so it’s perhaps meta auto fiction?

It’s definitely worth a read. If you’re over 30 give yourself at least fifty pages to become immersed.

[jenna]

Wow, this packed a punch. While there are many aspects of Rishi's story I cannot personally relate to (I was neither daring nor aware enough to be a high-school activist, my parents and upbringing are more akin to Georgia's than to hers, I am not Stanford material), I could not shake, while reading, the disturbing kinship I felt with her. What Rishi felt, my heart mimicked; Rishi's pain begot my tears; my stomach hurt nearly the whole time reading about her misadventures, her misunderstandings, her mistakes.

I am one year younger than Rishi; my freshman year of college began during lockdown, while she had at least a semester of normalcy before her isolation began. Her neuroses, her incessant need to make meaning of everything she's experiencing, her refusal to accept the randomness and unfairness of life, these are mine as well. The loss of an impossibly close, unrelenting, intoxicating, all-encompassing friendship which has turned suffocating, dangerous, painful, this I know, too. The denial of herself, her desires. "This is why they didn't used to educate girls. Knowing and thinking cause so many issues!" (101). The way everyone, most of all Rishi herself, disapproves of how deeply she emotes, her "big feelings." The fact that everyone she idealized, put on a pedestal, turned out to be irrevocably, infuriatingly human (fallible, selfish). Her aimlessness, listlessness, loneliness, guilt, shame. Her unwavering belief that she is not lovable because someone does not love her. Kannan may as well have held a mirror in front of me and then struck me bluntly in the chest.

We all lost something big, and/or found ourselves, and/or devoted ourselves to a person/place/thing/idea that we had to abandon for one reason or another. We all have spent our transition out of teenage years bumbling around, confused, lost, and dreaming. We all suffered through lockdown, though certainly some more than others. In Rishi's narration, Kannan lays bear every guilty selfish, shameful, problematic thought we likeminded zoomers had if we were privileged enough to spend 2020 at home, making bread or art or poems or whatever else we could do instead of having a job or dying. She's not kind about it. She does not make Rishi a good guy automatically. Yet I wanted Rishi to win every time, and maybe that means I have more hope for myself than I thought. "It is jarring to discover how the things I thought were only mine, my anxious thoughts when nobody is watching, are actually indebted to forces of evil beyond my imagination" (207).

I have been trying to get back into writing. Book reviews have been my easiest avenue, as I find writing about myself much more accessible when in the context of a literary work I know to be great. I am released from the pressure for myself to live up to standards of quality or scope. Still, I struggle with the question Rishi asks herself across the novel: do I have anything worth writing about? And if I do, can I say anything worth reading? Probably not, is my gut instinct. But if Kannan could pull this masterpiece out of these two chaotic years in her life, maybe I can craft something passable, at the very least, from mine.

p.s. Any book whose epigraph is "You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?" is automatically Pulitzer material. I did not recall that that quote starts with, "I don't know what's wrong with you young people." Kamala, I know you're reading this, so I'll tell you directly, at the risk of unforgivable corniness: what's wrong with us is that we're young. We thrive on chaos and comma splices. We took Buzzfeed quizzes religiously in middle school. We have watched a livestreamed genocide in Palestine and a legislated one of trans people here. We came of age under a regime that decidedly wants most of us dead. We know we exist in the context. Do you?

[Jules]

2.5

to be fully honest, I am super conflicted about this - I liked the writing style and most of the time I was enjoying the story itself. On the other hand, there were a lot of moments that shot me right out of the story and left me confused about "the point" of the whole thing, which is fine, like I understand the point is that there is no point, but I want there to be a point (lol).

I saw some other reviewers saying that this book just came too early in Kannan's writing journey, and maybe that is true. I do want to read her other works, but this one just wasn't for me. I love stream-of-consciousness writing, but I also don't like feeling like I wasted my time reading something. Sadly, at the end of this, I was wondering why I even put in all the effort to get there.

My favorite part was Rishi and Georgia's relationship, and even though I understand that this is autofiction, I didn't like where that ended. Rishi is so vicious, time and time again, and all I wanted for her was to find her peace and I was hoping for her to find kindness in Georgia that she could then cultivate for herself. I am down with messy characters but I need them to learn something by the end, and as much as it felt like she was learning at some points, there felt like there was no change overall. Maybe that is what others meant when they said they wished Kannan published this with a couple more years of separation under her belt.

Also, the man-hating in this book was too much at times. I am still jaw on the floor about Rishi kicking that boy in the crotch during sex and not even being bothered by causing someone else pain. Like I said, Rishi is vicious and she never really gets away from that in the confines of the story, and I personally cannot reconcile with that. There were also multiple times where I felt like Rishi was being racist (or at least racially insensitive), but the narrative almost treated it like it was fine? Maybe I misread those sections but none of that hate seemed to be resolved in the end either.

Overall, I thought this was an interesting attempt (on Kannan's part) and I would be willing to read more from the author, just not something like this I think lol.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an advanced and free digital copy in exchange for an honest review.