Weike Wang's novel 'Rental House' explores the complexity of family dynamics through the character Keru, a woman seeking to create harmony amidst the challenges posed by her family background. Set in a rental house in Cape Cod, Keru and her husband Nate aim to craft a family experience by bringing together their diverse parents. The story reveals the intricacies of cultural expectations and personal struggles as Keru navigates her immigrant heritage and the contrasting values of her in-laws amidst the tension of family interactions.
Inside the lab, only the worst student would keep running the same experiment while hoping for a different outcome, and yet outside the lab, this inefficient method is the norm.
Rental House follows a woman named Keru, who runs her life with methodological rigor; the controlled experiment she's conducting is how to build a new family out of two disjointed halves.
Keru’s parents are Chinese immigrant parents whose rendering verges on caricature: cold, demanding, unimpressed, as skeptical of the dishwashing machine as they are of their son-in-law.
The rental house is intended as a gift to them all, a relaxing family vacation. But family vacations never unfold as intended.
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