All This Could Be Different

RAKHEE'S PICK

I never thought a novel would make me feel so tenderly about the word “bro.” All This Could Be Different is so many things but if I had to narrow it down, I would say it’s an articulation of the immigrant experience, a heartfelt love story, and a tackling of socioeconomic issues all with a tender hand. I’ve been talking about this book for over a year - it’s beautiful, hard and pulling with a subtlety I found so deeply affecting. I have to use the word “so” one million times to make my enthusiasm clear. There is no other way! -RS

From a brilliant new voice comes an electrifying novel of a young immigrant building a life for herself—a warm, dazzling, and profound saga of queer love, friendship, work, and precarity in twenty-first century America

Graduating into the long maw of an American recession, Sneha is one of the fortunate ones. She’s moved to Milwaukee for an entry-level corporate job that, grueling as it may be, is the key that unlocks every door: she can pick up the tab at dinner with her new friend Tig, get her college buddy Thom hired alongside her, and send money to her parents back in India. She begins dating women—soon developing a burning crush on Marina, a beguiling and beautiful dancer who always seems just out of reach.

But before long, trouble arrives. Painful secrets rear their heads; jobs go off the rails; evictions loom. Sneha struggles to be truly close and open with anybody, even as her friendships deepen, even as she throws herself headlong into a dizzying romance with Marina. It’s then that Tig begins to draw up a radical solution to their problems, hoping to save them all.

A beautiful and capacious novel rendered in singular, unforgettable prose, All This Could Be Different is a wise, tender, and riveting group portrait of young people forging love and community amidst struggle, and a moving story of one immigrant’s journey to make her home in the world.

Paperback | 320 pages | 5.10" x 7.75"