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Awake in the Floating City
Awake in the Floating City: A Novel | Susanna Kwan
1 post | 1 read | 1 to read
An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares fortwo of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave. Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escapebut as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay. Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought shed abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bos own, shes struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mias health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman whos brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.
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Bookwormjillk
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This is one of the best books I‘ve read this year. In the future San Francisco has been mostly abandoned due to flooding. Artist Bo is paralyzed with indecision after her mother disappears in a flash flood and stays. She takes a job as a caregiver for Mia and the family they make together is just a beautiful thing. With everything going on these days I really loved reading such a hopeful book set in the midst of destruction. ⬇️

Bookwormjillk This was an ARC from NetGalley. It comes out May 2025 and I hope to see it on many summer reading lists next year. 2mo
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