Tiffany Tsao's But Won't I Miss Me features a world where income inequality is staggering and motherhood requires a literal relinquishing of self. Vivi, an immigrant to Australia from a minority Chinese community in Indonesia, struggles to find equilibrium after her son, Cloud, is born. Unlike most new mothers, Vivi hasn't been gifted with the "boundless reserves of patience, energy, and emotional intuition" usually granted after childbirth. In this alternate setting, alongside their growing embryos, pregnant women also gestate a second self that emerges from their bodies after birth and quickly attain adult size, at which point it fully ingests their earlier self. But Vivi's transformation seems to misfire and she's instead a diminished version of herself, engendering approbation from those around her, including her once-adoring husband. Her marriage subsequently collapses, leaving her to return to her occupation of "hobbler," a person who retrofits outdated appliances and devices to new voltage demands.
But Won't I Miss Me is a combination of mystery, psychological portrait, and sustained philosophical provocation. Tsao, a PEN Prize-winning literary translator of Indonesian fiction in addition to being an author, holds all these registers in balance with singular skill. Tsao's horror operates through implication; the novel's most disturbing moments arise from its world's absolute and cheerful systemic indifference to what women surrender.
Comparable to Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch or Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House, this novel is breathtaking in its world-building and devastating in its emotional precision. But Won't I Miss Me is the body horror novel motherhood always deserved. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.