All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews

I don’t have those experiences personally, but I’ve seen a lot of reviewers say they felt deeply seen. But of course, Mathews brings so much more here with Sneha being a first-gen, non-citizen immigrant. I think all young women understand this struggle. It’s a bildungsroman (early adulthood novel) that nails the entry-level corporate hustle, the way it asks you to tie your identity to your job while you try to figure out who you are outside it trying to climb a ladder while exploring friendship and love and holding onto yourself even if you don’t always know who you are. This is - and I mean this in the best way - a very millennial book. Eventually she meets a dancer named Marina and they hit it off. When she’s not working, she’s on dating apps or finding girls to take home in bars, but also looking for new friends to forge connections with.

Her parents have moved back to India and she’s found a contract job as a corporate consultant in Milwaukee. The story is about Sneha, a young woman who graduated college into the midst of the 2008 recession. Mathews takes a lot of the things that modernly successful books do well and builds on them in a way that feels fresh and novel. Think sad girl literature, but but make it a queer, first-gen immigrant, South Asian protagonist. All This Could Be Different is a smart, impressive debut, and I’m very glad that the National Book Award put it in my hands.

All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews