You Are Here by Karin Lin-Greenberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This story brings together a list of characters connected by a mall in upstate New York. There’s a white bookstore manager and his black wife and biracial children who live in a tiny home he built for them to live with minimum belongings. There’s an Asian hair stylist single mother who secretly dreams of being an artist and whose son is into magic tricks. There’s a teenager who works at the mall and dreams of being an actress and the boy who is obsessed with her. And an old widow who lives next door to the biracial couple and gets her hair cut at the mall.
All of these characters’ lives weave in and out of each other as they navigate their lives and try to live and survive as the rumors of the mall closing turn out to be true.
This story covers many topics around race, growing up, work vs dreams, anger and obsession, grief and redemption. At its heart it’s a tender story around human connection and how complete strangers can make deep and meaningful differences in your life.
with gratitude to netgalley and Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
