Names Have Been Changed by Yu-Mei Balasingamchow
Names Have Been Changed unfolds through a first-person podcast confession during the 2020 shutdown, as a woman calling herself Ophir recounts a decade-old crime and her years on the run across the globe. Moving from Singapore to cities around the world, her story is as compelling as it is unsettling, drawing you into her choices and their consequences. She’s a fascinatingly messy protagonist — part anti-hero, part adversary, part spoiled and sympathetic — the kind you may not like but can’t stop listening to.
Names Have Been Changed by Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, (List Price: $30, Tiny Reparations Books, 9798217176595, June 2026)
Reviewed by Jamie, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, NC
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Julia Langbein says that the inspiration for her new novel, Dear Monica Lewinsky, came to her during a visit to the house where she grew up: “I had to go clear out my old childhood bedroom, and I found a diary from 1998 in which I had been disparaging of Monica Lewinsky in a way that was just very casual and normal for people at that time…It was this moment of compunction — we all recognize we had it wrong — but the writer in me was like, You’re picking up on some idea of Monica Lewinsky as a kind of saint whose public life completely fits with the stories of the early martyrs.” 
