Mathews's poignant and illuminating debut centers on an aloof 22-year-old Indian immigrant whose first job out of college brings her to the Midwest to work as a consultant-in-training for a large manufacturer. Sneha, having been alone since her parents moved back to India when she was a teen, scours online dating apps for other queer women as soon as she arrives in Milwaukee. She quickly finds a friend in philosophy student Antigone Clay, then enters her first love affair with the charming Marina--an older white dancer. Their relationship forces Sneha to reckon with the trauma of her parents' abandonment and brings to the fore the difficulties she has experienced in the U.S. as a person of color. She also reconnects with old college friends Thomas and Amit, and she comes to rely on and grow with her new patched-together community, especially as her financial situation becomes precarious and her apartment's property manager threatens to get her kicked out over minor infractions. Mathews is most affecting when charting the wonders of community-building, delving into the strenuous work that goes into sustaining meaningful friendships as well as the heartbreak that ensues when connections are fractured by dishonesty. This thoughtful exploration of the legacies of trauma makes an impact. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency. (Aug.)

Though she graduated amid a recession, all's well with Sneha. She found a good job in Milwaukee, also managing to swing a position for college friend Thom; she's got a new friend named Tig; and she's starting to date women, soon falling hard for Marina. Then everything goes haywire. From Iowa Writers' Workshop grad Mathews, whose work has been featured in Best American Short Stories 2020.

Sneha, narrator of Mathews' polished debut, just graduated college and landed in Milwaukee, "a rusted city where I had nobody, parents two oceans away." Between long days working her consulting job in change management ("I should have majored in Microsoft Excel."), Sneha amasses fine furniture for her paid-for apartment (negotiated into her contract), surfs the apps, and finds herself in a family of friends, who are a band of warm secondary characters, especially the inimitable Tig. As to her family of origin and the oceans now separating them, there was American-Dream success before there was a complete undoing, before Sneha's parents did not refuse the money she wired home to India. The distance does nothing to diminish the pressure only-child Sneha feels to make something of herself, nor her constant low-grade fear that they would never accept that she's queer--a fear she extinguishes with brutal force after her plan to sleep around fails and she falls for Marina. Recounting this heady time a decade or so later, Sneha is a magnetic teller of her tale of finding love, growing up, and summoning the power to change--and choose--her life. Kindred to Brandon Taylor's stellar Real Life (2020), this novel burrows deep.

A young woman reckons with her first job, her first love, and her first real friends. After she graduates from college, Sneha--the headstrong, intensely self-reliant narrator of this lovely novel--is lucky to find a job as a corporate consultant. It's the height of the mid-2000s recession, and Sneha's immigrant parents have been deported to their native India. Sneha moves to Milwaukee, where she tries on adulthood like an ill-fitting suit. Nothing comes easily: Her landlord has it out for her; her new girlfriend, Marina, seems to want more than Sneha can give; and then Peter, Sneha's boss, stops paying her. Meanwhile, a childhood trauma is demanding to be reckoned with. In her debut novel, Mathews achieves what so often seems to be impossible: a deeply felt "novel of ideas," for lack of a better phrase. Mathews somehow tackles the big abstractions--capitalism, gender, sexuality, Western individualism, etc.--while at the same time imbuing her characters with such real, flawed humanity that they seem ready to walk right off the page. Rarely is dialogue rendered so accurately. When Marina catches Sneha in a lie and demands an explanation, Sneha says, "Because I am a trash person and a coward." In her prose, Mathews can be deeply moving at the same time that she is funny; she dips into slang in a way that feels lyrical and rhythmic. "Bro," Sneha tells another friend, "the molecules of my whole body are just carbon and abandonment issues." If the novel seems to drag toward the end, this feels like a small, stingy criticism for a book that is, as a whole, beautifully written, lusciously felt, and marvelously envisioned. Resplendent with intelligence, wit, and feeling. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.