Abigail Savitch-Lew w/ Emdash, "Livonia Chow Mein"

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Every immigrant restaurant in America is also an argument about what America will eat, conducted quietly, over decades, by people nobody interviewed. Savitch-Lew's novel sits inside one of those places and takes the argument seriously - the family, the neighbourhood that changes around them, the dish that gets adjusted year after year until it belongs to somewhere new. She covered housing and neighbourhood politics as a reporter before this, and it shows in how carefully the block is built. The conversation partner is billed only as Emdash, which is the sort of thing that happens at a first-novel event and is part of why these nights are worth attending - nobody has decided yet what the book is, including the people presenting it. Free, Wednesday at seven, on the Sunset Strip, in a store where the staff still hand-write the recommendation cards. Thirty chairs. Eat before you come, or the book will make it worse.