Beginning in New York City in a tangled web of post-academia adulthood, in the late-20s, early-30s haze, Masquerade follows Meadow through a life in New York City, a childhood left behind in Shanghai, a friendship with his mysterious artist friend, and an ever-increasingly odd set of coincidences of mirrors and doubles, wrapped up in an odd book of 1930s Shanghai. Past the layers of mirrors and doubles, peeling away history and memory, Masquerade is about resisting the inertia of remaining in life when and where it’s comfortable and instead (re)-writing the story as you would like to see it.
Masquerade by Mike Fu, (List Price: $17.95, Tin House Books, 9781959030843, October 2024)
Reviewed by Mikey LaFave, Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee