An inveterate free spirit, Lucia Bok is a dreamer and a seeker. It seems her brain and body never stop wandering, taking her from her first breaths in Tennessee to college in New York City and itinerant stints abroad in Latin America and Vietnam. But to what end? During her South American travels, she stumbles across the answer: The object of her quest is encapsulated by a Spanish word, querencia, which means "a place we're most comfortable, where we know who we are, where we feel our most authentic selves." This one word will define the rest of Lucia's life and the battle she faces when her capricious eccentricities transform into full-blown psychoses, forcing her and her loved ones to discover where Lucia—and her illness—truly belongs in the world.

Mira T. Lee's debut novel, Everything Here Is Beautiful, is an astonishing and imaginative chronicle of mental illness and the unbreakable bonds of family. Taking readers on a journey from the halls of a psychiatric ward to the remote countryside of Ecuador, Lee examines the enigma that is Lucia through various perspectives, bringing together in a discordant symphony the voices of her sister, her husband, her lover and even Lucia herself (in both her lucid and agitated states). In shimmering prose, Lee nimbly unfurls a story that slithers like a serpent back and forth through time and across the threshold between what is perceived and what is real, producing a nuanced view of a complex woman and what it means to love her.

Everything Here Is Beautiful boldly delves into mental illness's profound impact on love and relationships, exploring tricky quandaries like to whom the burden of responsibility falls and whether it is possible to separate an individual from her illness. There are no easy answers to these questions, and Lee does not pretend otherwise. Instead, she presents us with a sensitive and elusive story of sisterhood and schizophrenia that is brimming with another one of Lucia's favorite words: saudade, a deep, melancholic longing for a person or state that is absent.

This electrifying first novel is wistful, wise and utterly unforgettable.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

TOP PICK
Set in the not-too-distant future, The Power is a chilling sci-fi novel expertly executed by award-winning British author Naomi Alderman. In Alderman’s alternate world, women have recently gained the ability to release waves of electricity through their fingertips—and the jolts can kill. Their lethal facility grants them physical supremacy over men, altering the fabric of society. The novel focuses on a few central characters, including Margot, a politician who learns through her young daughter that she, too, has the power; Allie, an orphan who falls in with a circle of nuns and begins touting a new religion; and Tunde, a would-be journalist whose video of a woman unleashing electricity goes viral. Alderman’s convincing and disturbing vision of the future has been compared to The Handmaid’s Tale. Selected as a best book of 2017 by NPR and the New York Times, this hypnotic novel offers futuristic thrills even as it explores important questions of gender and identity.

No Time to Spare
by Ursula K. Le Guin

This delightful volume brings together the late, beloved author’s crisply composed meditations on aging, cats and the craft of writing.

Everything Here Is Beautiful
by Mira T. Lee

The future looks bright for Lucia Bok—until she is beset by a recurring mental illness. The resulting turmoil upends her and her family’s lives as they struggle with important questions about tradition and marriage.

Love and Ruin
by Paula McLain

In this exhilarating novel, McLain delivers an unforgettable portrait of pioneering reporter Martha Gellhorn, who holds her own against a formidable husband—literary titan Ernest Hemingway.

Tangerine
by Christine Mangan

It’s 1956 in Morocco, and a twisted friendship between two women is about to explode. Exotic and suspenseful, Mangan’s bestselling debut novel is a true page-turner.

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Spun from an award-winning short story that originally appeared in the Missouri Review, this debut features Chinese American sisters Miranda and Lucia. Lucia, who starts hearing voices when their mother dies, marries a generous older man, then leaves him and has a baby with a young Latino immigrant even as Miranda tries to help her from afar.

At the opening of Lee's promising debut, Chinese-American Lucia Bok marries a coarse yet charming Russian-Israeli Jew named Yonah. The newlyweds quickly settle into a life in Manhattan's East Village, where Yonah runs a health food store and Lucy writes features for a Queens newspaper. But then, in quick succession, a mental illness Lucy thought had been cured returns and she realizes she wants a child. Those catalysts launch the rest of the novel's sprawling turbulence as characters deal with love, duty, the medical establishment, heritage, and the difficult choices that shape a life. Lee tells the story from several points of view, and the section from Lucy's perspective is the stand-out: Lucy is funny, observant, and emotionally intelligent. Her descriptions buzz with the unexpected: "They said I ‘suffer' from schizoaffective disorder. That's like the sampler plate of diagnoses, Best of Everything." The other sections are staid by comparison, and the prose is occasionally marred by awkward, clipped constructions, as well as some distracting overreaches. But Lee handles a sensitive subject with empathy and courage. Readers will find much to admire and ponder throughout, and Lucy's section reveals Lee as a writer of considerable talent and power. (Jan.)