Those waiting to read one of the best books of 2025 don’t have to wait long. “Homeseeking,” by Karissa Chen, has arrived on the scene early — and it’s a towering achievement in storytelling.
“Homeseeking” tells a tortured love story of separated lovers over 70 years, as it alternates back and forth between their perspectives. Suchi and Haiwen grew up together as children in the same Shanghai neighborhood. When Suchi first meets Haiwen he is holding a violin, which enchants her. The fact that he has a Western violin teacher is further intriguing, and foreshadowing of a fate abroad.
As teenagers the two became romantically involved. The book follows them through tumultuous times in China’s history as they migrate from Shanghai to Hong Kong, Taiwan and, eventually, America. As Suchi’s narrative moves through time forward, Haiwen’s moves backward, which might initially seem confusing to readers but works beautifully.
As the story progresses, Haiwen secretly decides to enlist in the army to keep his brother from the draft, which alters the future that could have been. While that may seem like a spoiler, it’s no secret that war changes people. Chen deftly explores the complex undertones of class and ethnicity. But all the threads that Chen weaves through this book are a beautiful tapestry to behold.
Music, for example, carries over from the days of young Haiwen playing the violin to war, as Brahm’s second movement plays in his head as he marches with his unit through China. Then, in Shanghai, “as a bomb sent a spray of water not two dozen feet from where he and his fellow soldiers ducked, he retreated into the meditative opening chords of the third movement of one of Beethoven’s string quartets.”
Outside of an encounter on a Hong Kong ferry in the 1960s that forever altered their destinies, Haiwen and Suchi don’t see each other again for decades, when they find one another at a market in Los Angeles in 2008. Haiwen, now known as Howard, is happy to reconnect with Suchi, and their friendship is renewed.
When people use the terms “sweeping” and “epic,” which absolutely describe this book, it is implied that there is a payoff after a long wait, but in “Homeseeking,” the payoff is in the small intimate moments between the two protagonists and their interconnected journeys.
In many regards, what the characters don’t say is more important than what they do (because of this, it practically begs to be adapted for the screen). With Chen’s economy of language and ability to strip away all except what’s necessary, readers are forced to pay attention to nuances of dialogue as well as the characters’ actions, which makes subtle shifts in mood and atmosphere palpable.
Chen masterfully packs in a considerable amount of history without overtaking the characters’ lives and stories, and her willingness to have characters flip back and forth between various languages further drives home the biggest takeaway the novel has to offer: Identity is always shifting. Yet, these shifting identities are perhaps why Chen’s characters never stop seeking their true home.
In a bold author’s note at the beginning of the book — while addressing a question about why some people need to engage in more than one language to adapt — Chen discusses the difficulty of staying true to the book’s various tongues, pronunciations, dialects and narratives, which, along with her protagonists, move both forward and backward in time.
“If you, the reader, find yourself confused, I hope instead of giving up, you might take a moment to imagine what it must be like for those who have to navigate this on a daily basis, and then forge onward,” she writes.
Readers who choose not to forge ahead will miss out on an impactful love story, told against the backdrop of historical events, as well as one of the best debut novels of this century.
Meredith Cummings is a freelance journalist and teaching assistant professor of journalism at Lehigh University.
Correction: a previous version of this article misspelled “Brahm’s.”
First Published: January 5, 2025, 10:30 a.m.
