Jade Song's first novel, Chlorine, landed on various awards and choice lists. Their notable sophomore title, I Love You Don't Die, is another intense examination of a solipsistic protagonist caught in the liminal space between suffering and surviving. Song's opening author's note acts as warning: "This novel carries darkness such as depression, anxiety, self-harm, disordered eating, suicide, and suicidal ideation--please be aware of this content." But it also counters with "in the darkness, there is light too: friends, lovers, and selves."
If Vicky could, she'd "settle down in her unmade bed for the remainder of her pointless, silly life," but her ever-changing alarm, set to five minutes before the next day's first meeting, regularly prods her it's "time to act alive." She's her boss's "favorite copywriter" at Onwards, a start-up specializing in death--"Death, the safest industry. Everyone would die. Everyone was already dying"--and boosted with irresistible celebrity-founded appeal. She's currently working on the "buzzworthy" marketization of said founder's official name change from Ernie to Urnie. Death, so to speak, keeps Vicky alive: she cocoons in a shabby sixth-floor walk-up above a Chinatown funeral parlor ("she's above grief"), comforted by an ever-growing collection of zhizas, paper offerings meant to be burned as sacrifices to the dead to make their afterlives easier, enjoyable, luxurious.
Besides work, which she does mostly from home (in bed), Vicky's only other regular interactions happen with (because of) Jen, her best (only) friend. Jen lives antithetically to Vicky, with an emotionally stable partner and employment at a wellness company. Her nagging encouragement to "at least try" leads Vicky to respond on a dating app to "Kevin, he/him, artist and gallery assistant. Angela, she/her, organizer." The couple seeks to become a throuple, although "no pressure on first meetup." A fulfilling threesome cautiously develops, but Vicky fights any discomfort by fleeing from her feelings, never allowing her emotions to settle. Mired in her own messiness, she doesn't recognize the potentially fatal trajectory she's on. Only love--in its myriad forms--albeit long discounted and dismissed, might offer lifesaving options.
Song's fiction clearly benefits from their filmmaking/artist background; the camera-ready scenes are rife with exquisite visual details ("a zhiza air conditioner unit she had cut from her zhiza two-story house... perfect paper fantasy positioned next to defective reality"). They write with unhindered vulnerability, of course about death, but also about exhaustion and tenacity, resignation and struggle, abandonment and trust--and the hope that "we figure it out together." --Terry Hong
Shelf Talker: Jade Song's sophomore novel intriguingly examines a solipsistic young woman's obsession with death.