Edwina's relationship with her mother - 'a crafty and sophisticated weaver of narratives who only wished to motivate me via elaborate tales of past lives' - is a fraught one, but Chin doesn't fall into the trap of casting the mother as a nagging busybody she comes across as a real person dealing with grief of her own. It asks us to examine a broken society that most of us have helped create.Ĭhin proves masterful at examining family dynamics. 'Edge Case' is a wonderful novel, smart but not showy, emotional but not sentimental. 'The others did nothing to rein in the 'jokes' or the snide condescension dressed up as 'constructive feedback,' the holiest of communion in tech startups.' 'The problem was that as a group, the tone was set by the two or three guys who seemed to think women were ill-equipped by nature to do certain things, like coding,' she explains. It's an excellent book that tackles a number of topics - misogyny, racism, love and estrangement - and does so beautifully.Įdge Case opens with Edwina putting in another's day work at AInstein, a tech company that's working on an artificial intelligence-powered robot programmed to tell jokes to people 'who needed some joy in their lives-the bedbound, the lonely, those who woke up each day wondering how to spend their hours.' She'd started her gig at the company with excitement, but that faded when she realized she was the startup's only woman employee.

Until she doesn't.Įdwina's struggles form the basis of Edge Case, the debut novel from YZ Chin.

She's sick of her co-workers, worried about her soon-to-expire work visa, and weary of her mother criticizing her weight and urging her to move back to Malaysia. Life isn't exactly working out for Edwina, a quality assurance analyst at a New York City startup.

Though I Get Home by YZ Chin