Barnes & NobleActivities of Daily Living- A Novel by Lisa Hsiao Chen

Finalist for the 2023 Gotham Book Prize and the PEN, Hemingway Award for Debut Novel Longlisted for the 2023 Carol Shields Prize A searching, sharply observed debut novel on the interconnection between work and life, loneliness and kinship, and the projects that occupy our time. How do we take stock of a life-by what means, and by what measure. This is the question that preoccupies Alice, a Taiwanese immigrant in her late thirties. In the off-hours from her day job, Alice struggles to create a project about the enigmatic downtown performance artist Tehching Hsieh and his monumental, yearlong 1980s performance pieces. Meanwhile, she becomes the caretaker for her aging stepfather, a Vietnam vet whose dream of making traditional Chinese furniture dissolved in alcoholism and dementia. As Alice roots deeper into Hsieh's radical use of time-in one piece, the artist confined himself to a cell for a year, in the next, he punched a time clock every hour, on the hour, for a year-and his mysterious disappearance from the art world, her project starts metabolizing events from her own life. She wanders from subway rides to street protests, loses touch with a friend, and tenderly observes her father's slow decline. Moving between present-day and 1980s New York City, with detours to Silicon Valley and the Venice Biennale, this vivid debut announces Lisa Hsiao Chen as an audacious new talent.