Review of Central Places by Delia Cai

“What was that like, to just confidently ask things of the world without wondering if someone would be annoyed by the burden of your needs?”

— Delia Cai

When it comes to books, there is always somewhere external that I hear about something.

I’d never heard of Delia Cai or her work as a journalist before coming across Central Places on a list somewhere on the Internet, but then I started looking up her writing and journalism, then was vaguely interested in what the novel she’d come up with had to offer. So I placed my reserve for it at my local library, patiently waited until I was at the top of the hold list, then read the novel over the course of a day.

I think I’m a sucker for novels that take place in New York City for some part, then even more of a sucker of the protagonist returning to their hometown at the end of the day. It’s probably because I moved back from New York to my hometown, specifically my childhood bedroom, except at a much younger stage in life than the protagonist of this novel, Audrey.

Onwards with the review!

When Audrey Zhou brings her New Yorker fiancé home to Illinois, her past is going to catch up with her.

Audrey Zhou seemingly has it all. She has a successful career in New York City in sales, her fiancé, a native New Yorker, does not make anywhere near as much as she does, they’re looking at brownstones to buy in Brooklyn, and all is going well in her life. Until her dad needs to go in for a medical procedure, and Audrey and her fiancé, Ben, are packing up to head to Illinois for Christmas.

Audrey met Ben at a mutual friend’s house, and he works as a photojournalist. He doesn’t make much, but fame is potentially on the horizon for him. Since he’s from New York, Audrey has met his wealthy parents, been to his family’s prim and proper home multiple times. His parents are even giving them the money to buy their brownstone, which is awfully generous of them.

However, Audrey’s family couldn’t be remotely similar. She constantly fights with her mom, and her dad, when he picks Ben and Audrey up from the Chicago airport, embarrasses her by taking them to an H Mart immediately.

Audrey worries that Ben will see them as less because of it, but Ben takes everything in stride at the beginning of their trip. He doesn’t really eat meat but eats the meat her family prepares for dinners, and he’s the model fiancé that anyone can’t help but to be charmed by. But conflict begins to escalate between Audrey and her mother, making the situation even more tense than it already is.

As Audrey shows Ben around all her old suburban haunts, they end up running in a haunting figure from her past: Kyle. Kyle was her big crush from high school, and a former member of Audrey’s friend group. Her best friend, who she had pulled away from when she was in college, no longer speaks to Audrey.

Audrey didn’t show up to her wedding, so it’s no wonder why. But when Audrey runs into Kyle, sparks fly, and Ben increasingly becomes more suspicious of the two. Audrey keeps hanging out with Kyle slash running into him, and things hit the fan when at a party, Audrey and Kyle talk about her high school boyfriend, who’s now dead, and Ben, while drunk, gets really angry.

Throughout the entire trip, tensions just keep increasing not only between Audrey and Ben, but also between Audrey and her parents.

Ben eventually leaves because he gets an assignment to go out to California and take pictures of the fires, leaving their relationship brimming with tension (we learn from the narrative that Audrey is also resentful of Ben because of how he wants to pick out a brownstone she doesn’t want in Bed-Stuy, implying that not only does she just go along with things and lets them explode eventually, but that the relationship is unbalanced to begin with).

She also runs into her childhood best friend at a church Christmas event, who is understandably pissed at Audrey.

Audrey then has sex with Kyle and immediately begins to regret it, showing that there’s kind of a toxic thing lowkey going on there to because she keeps running from him.

When her father’s diagnosis comes up bad, Audrey needs to make some major decisions about what she is going to do about her life, since she can no longer run from the past like she was doing before. Ben might’ve been the perfect fit for her new life in New York, but she just can’t stay away from Kyle and remember where she came from.

Overall Thoughts

I think Central Places had the set up to be a novel that I would’ve liked if executed a certain way, but Audrey is so clouded by her own drama and conflict that I just couldn’t have as much empathy as I wanted to for her.

I think this is a novel that also didn’t really need a love triangle; not everything has to do with love, and it would’ve been just as meaningful for her to realize that she can start a new life and be who she actually is without having to have messy relationships with men in the process.

Not only is she hurting the people around her actively, but she’s hurting herself. The writing itself is quite good, but I couldn’t vibe with the story and the characters at the end of the day. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad novel at all—it just wasn’t for me.

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