Review of Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar by Katie Yee

*Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar* by Maggie Yee (2025). Published by S&S/Summit Books.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

This blog post is interesting to me because lately, I’ve been struggling to get in my reading time. I was working for the longest time as a freelancer and contractor, but recently pivoted to an 8-5 job where I’m in an office. It’s not hybrid, so I’m always at home trying to put the puzzle pieces together of how I’ll get my reading done. I also continue working on this blog when I’m not at work, so the Instagram reels I’m fed about a 5-9 feel too real right now.

Anyways, I am trying to find that time to read here and there. Somehow I’m still on track for my Goodreads goal, even though I’ve been slowly giving up on the notion of reading goals in life. I think they can be a little too much pressure and takes the fun off of reading at the end of the day, and I want to read because I want to stay in touch with literature while also pursuing my side career as a writer.

I’ve been following Maggie Yee’s work for a few years now and remember when Maggie was first announced as an acquisition deal for a publisher. I patiently waited throughout the years for it to appear at my local library, and when it did I was the first person to request a copy of the novel to read.

It’s a bit of a short read, which worked for me at the time, so if you want to get through it over the weekend, during a flight, or at the beach, I think this is a solid read for that!

All of this said, let’s get into the review!

Over a plate of her favorite samosas, a woman is told her husband is cheating on her—then she finds out she has cancer.

Our main character in this novel is someone who really needs a break from life. One night, her husband asks if she wants to go into her favorite Indian restaurant for the buffet. She agrees, because who wouldn’t agree to going to her favorite buffet? It’s there though, over the samosas and everything lovely you’d get at these restaurants, her husband breaks the news he’s been cheating on her.

Turns out the other woman is named Maggie, which kickstarts the protagonist’s obsession with the other woman. At one point in the novel she does indeed get to meet her other counterpart, which is an awkward moment that makes you want to cringe for her, but also why the heck would her soon-to-be-former-husband want both of these women to meet? Odd energy right there.

But right after the Indian restaurant fiasco, the narrator feels her chest starting to ache. It’s specifically in her breasts, and when she goes to the doctor, she finds out she actually has breast cancer. With her best friend to help her out she tries to get her life sorted while also dealing with cancer and the slow break-up of her marriage, but she also decides to name the tumor Maggie because why not?

The rest of the novel takes place over the course of the months after these events. Our main character is still very much with her husband and projects to her tumor, now dubbed Maggie, about how things are going with her life and relationship. I haven’t mentioned the fact that she has kids yet in this review, but she does, and now she has to try and hide what’s happening with her health from them and her husband.

Because of this, she turns to telling them about Chinese mythology and folklore in an attempt to reconnect with her own past and future, as well as attempting to pass down her culture to them. Her husband is white and she is Chinese, which led to some cultural friction in how her kids were raised.

Overall Thoughts

As mentioned before, this is a shorter novel, and I feel like the summary portion of my review is shorter because of it. I describe this book as more of a character study than anything else, as we’re pretty much watching a single woman’s life fall apart over the course of months.

Granted, things could be a lot worse, but for our narrator, who remains unnamed throughout the course of the novel, it feels like her universe is falling apart. I feel for her, and I feel like we get enough of her backstory and upbringing to understand a portion of the grief that’s rising to the surface here.

However, I felt like this novel was missing something that made it click for me. I don’t know if it’s an emotional disconnect from the plot at hand. The vignette and fragmented style of writing worked for me as a reader, especially as it fed into the emotional state of the narrator, but I wanted something more from the story overall.

I say pick this one up if it interests you though! It is a fairly quick read, and you might love it more than I did. Taste is so incredibly subjective at the end of the day.

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