[3] The novel follows three Asian American friends who meet on the Fourth of July at a barbecue in the eighties: Giselle Chin, a performance artist; Jackie Ong, a tech entrepreneur; and Ellen Ng, a community organizer and activist.

[1] Ko's urgency to write the novel was informed by recent concerns in the United States like book censorship and historical revisionism, as well as modern problems endemic to social media, technology, and artificial intelligence.

[2] Books she found particularly inspirational were The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner, Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta, and After Kathy Acker by Chris Kraus.

[2] Kirkus Reviews received the novel lukewarmly relative to Ko's debut, The Leavers, saying that it "fails to whip up much narrative tension" and that "the book’s elaborate conceptual structure dominates the characters who inhabit it.

"[6] Many publications, like The Guardian, lauded Ko's speculative approach to modern issues like gentrification, policing, wealth inequality, and technology.