What Could Be Saved

Liese O'Halloran Schwarz's WHAT COULD BE SAVED snagged my attention during a reading dry spell. Thank you, Atria Books, for the gifted ARC! Given its length, I found it to be a surprisingly fast read with alternating timelines and perspectives to keep the momentum going. It's out on 1/12/21 in the U.S.

This book tracks an American family at two points in time: Bangkok, 1972 as ex-pats with young children and Washington, D.C., 2019 with those young children all grown up and middle-aged, with a mother developing dementia.

(To avoid spoilers, the content warnings for this book are at the end of this caption.)

At the heart of this book is a mystery: what happened to Philip Preston, who goes missing one day in 1972? And should we trust the person who reappears in 2019 claiming to be him?

What unfolds is a fast-moving novel full of family drama and secrets, mired in paternalism, desire, and regret. There are touches of white saviorism but they felt intentional, to show how things have changed from 1972 to 2019.

I'm a little on the fence. I thought the twist at the end took away one character's humanity and villainized them without developing their depth. This character was not white, and the events that occurred after directly and negatively impacted the Preston family. And at the end of the day, this book is about this white American family and what happens to them. I'd just love to see a corollary that looks at it from the Southeast Asian lens.

I think that fans of Celeste Ng, Jodi Picoult, Lisa See, and Kristen Hannah will find this one absorbing!

⚠️ Content warnings: rape and sexual assault, forced sex work, kidnapping, infidelity