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Awake in the Floating City
Awake in the Floating City: A Novel | Susanna Kwan
4 posts | 4 read | 15 to read
An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares fortwo of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave. Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escapebut as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay. Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought shed abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bos own, shes struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mias health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman whos brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.
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Centique
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Pickpick

This book is going to stay with me because the imagery was so vivid. Bo lives in San Fran in about 2050. The city is flooded - everyone that hasnt evacuated lives in apartment buildings above the third floor. Markets happen on rooftops - you move from building to building across bridges. Why does Bo, a traumatised artist stay, when she could leave? This is a character driven novel, a slow thoughtful novel ⬇️

Centique With beautiful details. There is a lot about memory, grief, ageing and loss. A book that deals with a lot of sadness but actually builds a feeling of hope and purpose. 4mo
Bookwormjillk I loved this book 4mo
Suet624 That idea of using the rooftops intrigued me. Stacked! 4mo
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Centique @Suet624 thats what drew me in as well! Its fascinating 😍 4mo
Centique @Bookwormjillk so good and so beautifully written. Hard to believe its a debut! 4mo
Reggie Future climate change stories. I would have stacked this if I hadn‘t yet. Great review. 4mo
Centique @Reggie thank you! Is your road trip finished? It sounded like a good adventure 😍 4mo
Reggie @Centique it was great. It was also known as my carb farewell tour. I ate soooo good. So much bbq, so many cookies. The last day I thought of you because I saw my witch house in a neighborhood I walked through to go get more biscuits and gravy. It looked like it hadn‘t seen a new paint for a couple of decades. Maybe there had been a fire. But there was shrubbery all around it. And there were tall trees on both sides of the house. Making it 4mo
Reggie look emo because they had over hanging branches that covered the windows that looked like the eyes of the house. There was no door to it and I could just imagine a hand curled around the edge. Very spooky during the day. I could only imagine it at night. 4mo
Centique @Reggie geez super spooky! I love the sound of it and all those carbs. I have never had biscuits and gravy but it sounds so good. My mum used to make an English beef stew with dumplings (kind of like little scones that cook in the gravy). Im wondering if it tastes a bit like that. We carbed it up too on our recent holiday with really good burgers and pizza and kebabs and then a friend made us pecan puddings with caramel sauce that were AMAZE. 4mo
Centique @Reggie i have to get disciplined now because I can no longer bend in the middle wearing most of my jeans!! 😝🤪 4mo
Rissreadswithcats @Reggie I hear ya! I‘m not very bendy in the middle at the moment either! (edited) 4mo
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review
Jas16
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Pickpick

Set in a future flooded San Francisco where those who have stayed adapt to lives lived on upper floors of buildings connected by bridges. Bo should have left long ago. Instead she accepts an assignment caring for her elderly neighbor and learning about her life. The book plods along with seemingly little actually happening but the story of Bo and Mei and the connection they made me reflect on relationships in my own life. A soft pick. Out 5/13

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Bookwormjillk
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This is one of the best books I‘ve read this year. In the future San Francisco has been mostly abandoned due to flooding. Artist Bo is paralyzed with indecision after her mother disappears in a flash flood and stays. She takes a job as a caregiver for Mia and the family they make together is just a beautiful thing. With everything going on these days I really loved reading such a hopeful book set in the midst of destruction. ⬇️

Bookwormjillk This was an ARC from NetGalley. It comes out May 2025 and I hope to see it on many summer reading lists next year. 13mo
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