## Details * Title:: [[Nice Places]] * Authors:: [[Vincent Chu]] * Tags:: #fiction * Read:: [[2026-04-23]] * Instagram :: https://www.instagram.com/p/DXhB0JMDkGw/ ## Editions - Edition:: [[Forest Avenue Press]], 2026 - Original Copyright:: 2026 - Pages:: 296 ## Purchase * Bookshop.org:: https://bookshop.org/a/94437/9781942436713 ## Annotations Vincent Chu’s debut novel, Nice Places, is on the surface a funny, breezy satire of social media influencing and clout chasing. At a deeper level it explores what Jonathan Franzen once called the “alarm bell of anxiety” ringing through our homes and workplaces, tuned to our vulnerabilities, and amplified by the intractability of an always-on world. In this way, Nice Places recalls Miranda July’s All Fours, though their protagonists respond to that “alarm bell” in sharply different ways. More than that, what I kept thinking about was the German film, Good bye, Lenin! — also about escape, but one that requires building something. In Wolfgang Becker’s film, the son doesn’t flee the world; he reconstructs it in fiction, brick by brick, to protect someone he loves from a reality that would destroy her. Chu is working in a similar key, but his protagonist constructs a fiction to appease others and protect himself from a reality that’s destroying him. His is a novel that unfolds with deepening familiarity and affection.