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New Waves: A Novel
A wry and poignant debut novel about a man's search for true connection that is "both knowing and cutting, a satire of internet culture that is also a moving portrait of a lost human being" (Los Angeles Times).
"A knowing and thought-provoking exploration of love, modern isolation, and what it means to exist-especially as a person of color-in our increasingly digital age."-Celeste Ng, bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR-NPR, The New York Public Library, Parade, Kirkus Reviews
Lucas and Margo are fed up. Margo is a brilliant programmer tired of being talked over as the company's sole black employee, and while Lucas is one of many Asians at the firm, he's nearly invisible as a low-paid customer service rep. Together, they decide to steal their tech startup's user database in an attempt at revenge. The heist takes a sudden turn when Margo dies in a car accident, and Lucas is left reeling, wondering what to do with their secret-and wondering whether her death really was an accident. When Lucas hacks into Margo's computer looking for answers, he is drawn into her private online life and realizes just how little he knew about his best friend.
With a fresh voice, biting humor, and piercing observations about human nature, Kevin Nguyen brings an insider's knowledge of the tech industry to this imaginative novel. A pitch-perfect exploration of race and startup culture, secrecy and surveillance, social media and friendship, New Waves asks: How well do we really know one another? And how do we form true intimacy and connection in a tech-obsessed world?
Praise for New Waves
"Nguyen's stellar debut is a piercing assessment of young adulthood, the tech industry, and racism. . . . Nguyen impressively holds together his overlapping plot threads while providing incisive criticism of privilege and a dose of sharp humor. The story is fast-paced and fascinating, but also deeply felt; the effect is a page-turner with some serious bite."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A blistering sendup of startup culture and a sprawling, ambitious, tender debut."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A knowing and thought-provoking exploration of love, modern isolation, and what it means to exist-especially as a person of color-in our increasingly digital age."-Celeste Ng, bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR-NPR, The New York Public Library, Parade, Kirkus Reviews
Lucas and Margo are fed up. Margo is a brilliant programmer tired of being talked over as the company's sole black employee, and while Lucas is one of many Asians at the firm, he's nearly invisible as a low-paid customer service rep. Together, they decide to steal their tech startup's user database in an attempt at revenge. The heist takes a sudden turn when Margo dies in a car accident, and Lucas is left reeling, wondering what to do with their secret-and wondering whether her death really was an accident. When Lucas hacks into Margo's computer looking for answers, he is drawn into her private online life and realizes just how little he knew about his best friend.
With a fresh voice, biting humor, and piercing observations about human nature, Kevin Nguyen brings an insider's knowledge of the tech industry to this imaginative novel. A pitch-perfect exploration of race and startup culture, secrecy and surveillance, social media and friendship, New Waves asks: How well do we really know one another? And how do we form true intimacy and connection in a tech-obsessed world?
Praise for New Waves
"Nguyen's stellar debut is a piercing assessment of young adulthood, the tech industry, and racism. . . . Nguyen impressively holds together his overlapping plot threads while providing incisive criticism of privilege and a dose of sharp humor. The story is fast-paced and fascinating, but also deeply felt; the effect is a page-turner with some serious bite."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A blistering sendup of startup culture and a sprawling, ambitious, tender debut."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Editorial Reviews
"[New Waves] cleverly conjures a modern Gatsby-and-Nick-Carraway dynamic between the narrator, Lucas, and his co-worker Margo. . . . [Kevin Nguyen] captures beautifully the subtle strains of being disenfranchised, poor and lonely in New York."-The New York Times Book Review
"A brilliant meditation on death and grief in the age of the internet. New Waves is full of modern noise and complicated love. Its prismatic, futuristic take onrace and identity are a thrill to read. The book is funny and sad in equal measure, inventive, self-aware, full of insight, but also entirely enjoyable."-Tommy Orange, author of There There
"E.M. Forster's mandate was to ‘only connect.' Kevin Nguyen shows us that in our brave new digital world, the best way to do that might be to disconnect. The result is New Waves, a sleek, stylish novel that weaves between disaffection and desire."-Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer and The Committed
"Kevin Nguyen's New Waves collapses every tired distinction about the internet. In this novel of relationships, race, and loss, everything is both permanent and ephemeral-technology both preserves and buries culture, and the people who ghost you can also haunt you. With his swift, funny, and merciless prose, Nguyen smartly dissects how life online may be digital, but it's far from binary."-Tony Tulathimutte, award–winning author of Private Citizens
"New Waves is a delight and a gamble and a treasure and a miracle. Nguyen's novel broke my heart. It made me laugh harder than any book reasonably should. It's everything I could possibly want in a story-but it's also that rarest, most unachievable of things: New Waves is truly something new."-Bryan Washington, author of Lot
"Mordant and fiercely smart, Kevin Nguyen's New Waves is a mystery within a mystery within a love story and i...
"A brilliant meditation on death and grief in the age of the internet. New Waves is full of modern noise and complicated love. Its prismatic, futuristic take onrace and identity are a thrill to read. The book is funny and sad in equal measure, inventive, self-aware, full of insight, but also entirely enjoyable."-Tommy Orange, author of There There
"E.M. Forster's mandate was to ‘only connect.' Kevin Nguyen shows us that in our brave new digital world, the best way to do that might be to disconnect. The result is New Waves, a sleek, stylish novel that weaves between disaffection and desire."-Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer and The Committed
"Kevin Nguyen's New Waves collapses every tired distinction about the internet. In this novel of relationships, race, and loss, everything is both permanent and ephemeral-technology both preserves and buries culture, and the people who ghost you can also haunt you. With his swift, funny, and merciless prose, Nguyen smartly dissects how life online may be digital, but it's far from binary."-Tony Tulathimutte, award–winning author of Private Citizens
"New Waves is a delight and a gamble and a treasure and a miracle. Nguyen's novel broke my heart. It made me laugh harder than any book reasonably should. It's everything I could possibly want in a story-but it's also that rarest, most unachievable of things: New Waves is truly something new."-Bryan Washington, author of Lot
"Mordant and fiercely smart, Kevin Nguyen's New Waves is a mystery within a mystery within a love story and i...
Readers Top Reviews
Nelda Brangwinthedoc
Okaaay….I read this book, but at the end, I’m not sure what I got out of it. After thinking about ti for a week, I still don’t understand where it was going. Lucas, who on a whim moves to New York City where he takes a position as customer rep at a tech firm. There he meets Margot, a bright, opinionated engineer for the company. They become friends and steal the customer database before leaving for another company. Then Margot dies and Lucas, adrift and lonely, gets asked by Margot’s mother to delete Margot’s Facebook account. Lucas takes her laptop and in searching her files finds a former friend of Margot’s, with whom he begins a relationship. He eventually moves back to Oregon and when he learns he got money from stock he owned in a tech company ends up moving to Tokyo, where Margot wanted to move. It was a challenging book to read.
kathleen g
An unusual structure and a lot of tech "stuff" might make this a hard sell for some readers but stick with it. It's the story of Lucas and Margot who steal valuable data from the company where they both worked until Margot was fired. And then she's hit and killed by a car. Lucas, at Margot's mom's request, finds himself exploring her world and he finds out a lot he didn't know about her. Lucas moved to Manhattan from Oregon; he's not as educated or as worldly as many of his colleagues but he turns out to be quite wily. The straight line narrative is interspersed with small sci-fi interludes. It makes for a read that can be challenging (where is this going?) but is ultimately rewarding. And you, like me, might learn something. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. Take a chance on this one.
Omar Abbas
Margos character is reassuring & comforting. A hard book to put down.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter I
New York 2009
I never considered it stealing. If it was stealing, it would feel like stealing-illicit, dangerous, maybe even a little bit thrilling. Instead, it felt like exactly what it was: sitting in a dark room, watching a loading bar creep across a computer screen.
Thieves were supposed to have the grace of a pickpocket, or the patience to plan a real heist. We'd just gotten a little drunk at McManus's, the bar around the corner, and decided that this would be the best way to get back at our employer. Well, Margo had decided. And technically, she didn't work at Nimbus anymore.
She had texted me from the bar earlier in the afternoon to tell me she'd quit. Margo had needed someone to drink with, and I always obliged. I snuck out of the office when no one was looking, though really, no one was ever looking for me. When I arrived at the bar, she was already three beers deep-the bottles lined up neatly in front of her, their labels meticulously peeled off, not a trace of paper or glue. She didn't say anything, just signaled to the bartender for two more.
I sat down next to Margo and her whole body clenched. I'd known her for a while and she was often angry, but it was the good kind: usually a vivid, infectious sort of fury-smart, spirited, just the right amount of snarky-aimed at institutions, structures, oppressors. She was unintimidated by people in power. In fact, she was energized by them, since they were targets worthy of her wrath. That is, unless she'd had too much to drink, in which case her marks were more haphazard. Two more beers and she admitted that she hadn't exactly quit.
"Are you kidding me?" I said. "You're the only remotely competent engineer at the company!"
"According to HR, I wasn't a good ‘culture fit.' I wasn't ‘getting along with the rest of the team.' " Margo began picking at the label on her fresh beer. "But that's bullshit. I know what that means."
Even from my desk on the other side of the office, I could hear Margo arguing with her colleagues. She didn't believe in collaboration if it meant compromising the best idea. She was a brilliant programmer, and still no one wanted to listen to her.
Margo went on: "uncooperative," "opinionated," "not a team player." It was laughable how their reasons were couched in the tired clichés of a high school football coach. To her, and I guess to me, it underscored the kind of laziness that had been bred by capitalism-an attitude that claimed to respect competition above all, but was completely conflict averse.
"Did they at least offer you severance?"
"I quit before they could fire me," she said. "I told them, politely, to f*** off."
I was curious how polite Margo was capable of being in such a situation.
"I don't want their f***ing money anyway. I've got plenty to live on. I'm a talented engineer and I can work wherever I want. Maybe I'll just take a year off, get away from all this."
She often talked about money this brazenly. It bothered me, since she knew I always had less than her. But at least Margo usually paid for drinks. I would motion toward my wallet as a courtesy and she would shrug it off, usually saying something like "I got this" or "Don't you f***ing dare." Once, just once, when she was really toasted, she joked that I would be allowed to pay for beers the day she didn't make twice as much as me. (It was closer to five times, but I didn't correct her.)
Today, she wasn't paying. Today, she only wanted retribution. Margo had been stewing on ways to get back at Nimbus during her first three drinks. She already had a plan.
"What is any company's most valuable asset?" she asked.
"Its . . . money?"
"No, Lucas, what's more valuable than money?"
This sounded like a trick question.
"Code?"
"No, its information," Margo said. "And that's what we're going to take."
"Isn't that stealing?"
Margo pointed her beer at me. "What about copying it?"
This was her proposal: Nimbus was a messaging service with millions of users. We would take their user database. Margo could easily access, duplicate, and download it. The whole thing would only take a few minutes. We would just take emails. No passwords, no personal information.
"Why would anyone want a list of email addresses?"
"Millions of email addresses," Margo clarified. "Any company would kill for a list of people using a competitor's product."
"Why?"
"For marketing, or whatever." Margo gestured at nothing in particular, like she'd just performed the world's saddest magic trick. She casually mentioned that she knew someone who worked at Phantom, Nimbus's biggest competitor. It was their CEO. Maybe they'd be interested in it.
"It'...
New York 2009
I never considered it stealing. If it was stealing, it would feel like stealing-illicit, dangerous, maybe even a little bit thrilling. Instead, it felt like exactly what it was: sitting in a dark room, watching a loading bar creep across a computer screen.
Thieves were supposed to have the grace of a pickpocket, or the patience to plan a real heist. We'd just gotten a little drunk at McManus's, the bar around the corner, and decided that this would be the best way to get back at our employer. Well, Margo had decided. And technically, she didn't work at Nimbus anymore.
She had texted me from the bar earlier in the afternoon to tell me she'd quit. Margo had needed someone to drink with, and I always obliged. I snuck out of the office when no one was looking, though really, no one was ever looking for me. When I arrived at the bar, she was already three beers deep-the bottles lined up neatly in front of her, their labels meticulously peeled off, not a trace of paper or glue. She didn't say anything, just signaled to the bartender for two more.
I sat down next to Margo and her whole body clenched. I'd known her for a while and she was often angry, but it was the good kind: usually a vivid, infectious sort of fury-smart, spirited, just the right amount of snarky-aimed at institutions, structures, oppressors. She was unintimidated by people in power. In fact, she was energized by them, since they were targets worthy of her wrath. That is, unless she'd had too much to drink, in which case her marks were more haphazard. Two more beers and she admitted that she hadn't exactly quit.
"Are you kidding me?" I said. "You're the only remotely competent engineer at the company!"
"According to HR, I wasn't a good ‘culture fit.' I wasn't ‘getting along with the rest of the team.' " Margo began picking at the label on her fresh beer. "But that's bullshit. I know what that means."
Even from my desk on the other side of the office, I could hear Margo arguing with her colleagues. She didn't believe in collaboration if it meant compromising the best idea. She was a brilliant programmer, and still no one wanted to listen to her.
Margo went on: "uncooperative," "opinionated," "not a team player." It was laughable how their reasons were couched in the tired clichés of a high school football coach. To her, and I guess to me, it underscored the kind of laziness that had been bred by capitalism-an attitude that claimed to respect competition above all, but was completely conflict averse.
"Did they at least offer you severance?"
"I quit before they could fire me," she said. "I told them, politely, to f*** off."
I was curious how polite Margo was capable of being in such a situation.
"I don't want their f***ing money anyway. I've got plenty to live on. I'm a talented engineer and I can work wherever I want. Maybe I'll just take a year off, get away from all this."
She often talked about money this brazenly. It bothered me, since she knew I always had less than her. But at least Margo usually paid for drinks. I would motion toward my wallet as a courtesy and she would shrug it off, usually saying something like "I got this" or "Don't you f***ing dare." Once, just once, when she was really toasted, she joked that I would be allowed to pay for beers the day she didn't make twice as much as me. (It was closer to five times, but I didn't correct her.)
Today, she wasn't paying. Today, she only wanted retribution. Margo had been stewing on ways to get back at Nimbus during her first three drinks. She already had a plan.
"What is any company's most valuable asset?" she asked.
"Its . . . money?"
"No, Lucas, what's more valuable than money?"
This sounded like a trick question.
"Code?"
"No, its information," Margo said. "And that's what we're going to take."
"Isn't that stealing?"
Margo pointed her beer at me. "What about copying it?"
This was her proposal: Nimbus was a messaging service with millions of users. We would take their user database. Margo could easily access, duplicate, and download it. The whole thing would only take a few minutes. We would just take emails. No passwords, no personal information.
"Why would anyone want a list of email addresses?"
"Millions of email addresses," Margo clarified. "Any company would kill for a list of people using a competitor's product."
"Why?"
"For marketing, or whatever." Margo gestured at nothing in particular, like she'd just performed the world's saddest magic trick. She casually mentioned that she knew someone who worked at Phantom, Nimbus's biggest competitor. It was their CEO. Maybe they'd be interested in it.
"It'...
