Maggie; or, a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar by Katie Yee

A Double Whammy: Infidelity and Cancer

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This book goes down easy. The writing is conversational in style. It flows and flows from the modern day to the back story over and over again. In this manner, we learn that the narrator is an Asian American woman married to a Caucasian man. Together they have two children.

A double whammy soon comes the narrator’s way as her husband, Max, tells her he has found someone else and wants a divorce. Almost simultaneously, she learns that she has cancer.

The narrator and her best friend, Darlene, decide to name her tumor. “[They] settle on Maggie, after [her] husband’s lover. Like you’re a cancer, Maggie. But also like, look, I have one, too.”

This book has won lots of acclaim. It was named Barnes & Noble’s 2025 Discover Prize Winner, which is the bookseller’s pick of the best new author published in a given year.  In their announcement of the award, they say the book is “funny and full of heart,” and that it is “centered on a woman determined to find humor in her heartbreak.”

I liked the book. I identified with the narrator’s plight as a woman in a marriage in a patriarchal society. And I was interested in her ruminations about her interracial marriage and if that had a part in its downfall. All of that says a lot! But, I didn’t think it the best book of the year.

And still, here are a few quotes I really liked. See what you think…

• When the doctor called to share the news of the cancer, he asks if it is a good time for her to talk. She thinks, “The question almost makes me laugh. There is no such thing as a good time. There are always dishes to wash and floors to sweep, and toilets to scrub, laundry to fold.”
• Thinking about her wedding day, she reminds us that her parents were deceased at the time as she says, “[This] reminds me of walking down the aisle alone on my wedding day. No parents left to stride alongside me. I gave myself away. The last few months have felt like a long and drawn out process of taking back the pieces of myself from various beasts.”
• And on the topic of how to refer to a significant other after the marriage has ended she says, “Darlene tells me that the point is to cut myself out of his identity completely. Eliminate the “my.” Not my husband, not my ex-husband, not my anything, no not mine.”

These quotes resonated with me because…

• I have railed against the never-ending and never-appreciated aspects of wifehood.
• I realized after divorce that I had cut off parts of myself that did not fit into the marriage and then had to sweep those pieces back together after divorce.
• And I struggled mightily with finding ways to refer to the person to whom I had been married without calling him “my” anything.

As I said, I identified with the story in many ways. And I liked the story, but did not love it. But maybe that’s because it struck too close to home.

Read it. Let me know what you think.

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Click here to learn more about Maggie; or, a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar.

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If you like my writing, I hope you will check out my new book, Chai on Life. “Chai” is a mystical word in Hebrew. It is pronounced “high” making this book High on Life with a Jewish slant. It is available wherever books are sold including Amazon.