Disappoint Me

Max is thirty, living with a lifetime of dysphoria and a head full of irritating exes, and she is plagued by a deep dissatisfaction. These should be the best years of her life, so why don't they feel that way? After a tumble down the stairs at a New Year's Eve party, she decides to change things, beginning with an attempt at good old-fashioned heteronormativity.

She thinks she has found her answer in Vincent. His corporate colleagues, traditional friends and Chinese parents never pictured him dating a trans woman, yet he cares for Max in a way she had always written off as a foolish fantasy. But Vincent has baggage of his own, and when the fallout from an entanglement that goes back decades resurfaces, Max has to decide what forgiveness really means.

The novel asks whether we can be more than our worst mistakes and whether it is possible to make peace with the past. It opens with a reflection that you can fall in love with an outline and even make a home with one, but that eventually the bones demand their flesh, and that a person is no fewer than two things.