Masquerade

Translator Fu debuts with an eerie and rewarding story of a queer Chinese American grappling with his sense of self. Meadow Liu, 29, meets Japanese artist Selma at a gallery in New York City and the two develop a strong friendship based on “intensity of feeling.” Having grown up in Tennessee, he’s excited to explore the city’s gay scene and stirred by Selma’s bold fashion sense. When she leaves town for a residency in Shanghai, he stays in her apartment, where he finds a copy of The Masquerade, a 1940 novel by Liu Tian about a masquerade ball. The strange coincidence (Liu Tian is Meadow’s Chinese birth name) proves to be a harbinger for the book’s uncanny effect on him—after he reads a description of a magic mirror, he looks in Selma’s mirror and sees younger and older versions of himself. Later, he wakes up from dreams of a masquerade ball with the unshakable feeling that he was there. After he learns that Selma has gone missing in Shanghai, his sense of reality further deteriorates. Fu’s vivid collage of imagery and metafictional elements intriguingly conveys Meadow’s state of mind, and the ways in which masks can help a person find oneself. This funhouse of a novel is worth seeking out. Agent: Heather Carr, Friedrich Agency. (Oct.)