Structured as a handful of confessional-style podcast episodes that are by turns suspenseful, outrageous, heart-breaking and poignant, Yu-Mei Balasingamchow’s NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED is that rare novel where an unmistakably literary voice keeps you on the very edge of your seat.
NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED
by Yu-Mei Balasingamchow
Tiny Reparations Books/PRH, publication date TBD
(via The Friedrich Agency)
Ophir isn’t her real name, but she likes it fine for now, and if she’s going to get through this story—the real story of her last 12 years on the run—she’s going to do it on her own terms. This is what our narrator promises as she sets out to broadcast (with the help of a mysterious friend, from an undisclosed location) her tumultuous life as a fugitive, forever estranged from her home and family in Singapore, where it all began. Entrancing her listeners with a tale that transports us from Thailand to Tokyo, and from London to America’s Midwest, it is Ophir’s loneliness and longing for connection that eventually jeopardizes her hard-won freedom.
Like R.F. Kuang’s YELLOWFACE and Susie Yang’s WHITE IVY, NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED is a stylish, fast-paced story that tests the limits of our ability to empathize with a morally dubious narrator, while also interrogating the idea of a performed self, and what makes an authentic voice. And like Angie Cruz’s HOW NOT TO DROWN IN A GLASS OF WATER, this is a confession that recounts and reframes the complicated paths we take to build a life and a home. Ultimately, it’s an immigrant story… but not the one you expect.
Yu-Mei Balasingamchow was born and raised in Singapore but now lives in Boston, where she teaches writing workshops (Grub Street) and was for several years a bookseller at Papercuts JP. NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED was written with the support of the Elizabeth George Foundation, and Yu-Mei has previously attended Sewanee (on scholarship), Tin House, and Bread Loaf to workshop her short fiction. Her short stories have won prizes (the Mississippi Review Fiction prize) and special mentions (The Pushcart Prize, Sewanee Review fiction prize, and the Commonwealth Prize in the UK). She received her MFA from Boston University, and this is her debut novel.
Simone is the star of Edwards University’s creative writing department: renowned Woolf scholar, grief memoirist, and campus sex icon. Her less glamorous and ostensibly devoted husband, Ethan, is a forgotten novelist and lecturer in the same department. But when Ethan and the department administrative assistant Abigail have sex, Simone and Ethan’s faith in their flawless marriage is rattled. 
It’s 1999, and best friends Sal and Charo are striving to hold on to their dreams in a New York determined to grind them down. Sal is a book-loving science nerd trying to grow beyond his dead-end job in a new city, but he’s held back by tragic memories from his past in Santo Domingo. Free-spirited Charo is surprised to find herself a mother at twenty-five, partnered with a controlling man, working at the same supermarket for years, her world shrunk to the very domesticity she thought she’d escaped in her old country. When Sal finds love at a gay club one night, both his and Charo’s worlds unexpectedly open up to a vibrant social circle that pushes them to reckon with what they owe to their own selves, pasts, futures, and, always, each other.
The Sawbrooks have lived on prime real estate on the lakes of Michigan since before there was prime real estate. A family of smugglers and bootleggers, every man, woman, and child in each generation has been taught to navigate the nooks and crannies of the rivers and highways that flow in and out of Canada. The hidden routes are the family’s legacy.