Beautifully written, Masquerade is a bit hard to describe when it comes to its premise. Generally speaking, the novel follows Meadow Liu, who is house-sitting for a friend in New York City for the summer. However, house-sitting proves to be a bit of an experience for Meadow, who finds himself dealing with odd and coincidental circumstances that seem to blur the boundaries of reality and the imaginary. Between all of this, the reader sees the protagonist contending with loneliness, his identity, as well as trying to find a sense of direction in his life now that he’s in his thirties.

Again, the novel was beautifully written, and I commend Fu for conjuring up such a sensual and mysterious novel that read a bit like waking up from an abstract dream. He takes his time with the narrative. Introspection is at the forefront as thoughts slowly swirl around, there is a constant sense of existential aimlessness as the reader follows Meadow through a city haze (whether it be New York City or Shanghai). I think Fu did a great job capturing the sense of unease that often comes with being in your late twenties and early thirties in this day and age, even if it’s hard to parse out what exactly happened.

On that note, I think my biggest frustration with this novel was that a lot happened yet… not. What I mean by this is that all sorts of ideas and events would be introduced throughout the novel, yet very little is done with them. I get the impression that Fu wanted to write an ambiguous story that is meant to be more affective than anything, so things left unresolved seem inevitable. However, I felt as though this resulted in the novel lacking a sense of purpose for the reader to grasp. I think I enjoyed some of what I read, but I also couldn’t help but wonder what exactly I was supposed to get out of the novel.

The ending frustrated me a fair bit and actually made me dislike Meadow, aha. The way it was written also didn’t seem to fit at all with the rest of the novel, so I’m not entirely sure what to make of it, other than that it left me rather unsatisfied. It’s hard to say if I would recommend this novel or not, because I think it would work for a very specific audience, but I could see this being frustrating for most others.