In aviation lingo, a holding pattern is defined as the flight path maintained by an airplane that’s waiting for permission to land. In more general terms, it means a state or period of time in which there isn’t any progress or change.

Given those parameters, it’s an interesting choice for a book title. It implies a set of characters who are either stuck, biding their time, or at a physical or emotional standstill.

Jenny Xie, a 2023 honoree of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35, has written a deceptively layered debut novel. There’s a whole lot more going on in these pages and with these characters than first meets the eye.

On its surface, Xie’s “Holding Pattern” courses through familiar 20-something terrain. Its 28-year-old Chinese American protagonist, Kathleen Cheng, is a recent grad school dropout who has just moved back into her childhood home in Oakland and lives with her divorced mom. On top of feeling directionless, she also can’t shake the relentless waves of despair after getting dumped by the man she thought she would marry.

In between passages preoccupied with Kathleen’s putzing around her room and second-guessing every decision she ever made in life, other sections blaze through escapades that seem par for the course for the modern-day Bay Area Burner/tech bro set — a drug-fueled, rave-style dance party at her best friend’s loft-filled apartment complex; a pet influencer convention in Vegas full of hotshot Instagrammers clamoring for sponsors; and jaunts around Oakland neighborhoods full of “farm-to-table brunch spots and craft beer dens populated by hip parents and their well-dressed babies.” (Whether Xie is sincerely depicting this reality or doing so with a healthy dose of eye-rolling is sometimes hard to tell; I suspect the latter.)

But woven into all this existential angst and fun-having is something deeper — and much more interesting. For one, Kathleen takes a job as a professional platonic cuddler to make ends meet (yes, there is such a thing). Her struggles to openly and honestly navigate the blurry boundaries of intimacy and the meaning of touch with her clients — especially one to whom she becomes attached — thoughtfully and perceptively highlight the very real gray area that exists between what may or may not be appropriate. (For me, these bits seemed especially poignant and revelatory within the context of our post-#MeToo, post-pandemic world when loneliness and rates of depression are at an all-time high.)

What’s more, Kathleen’s 53-year-old recovering-alcoholic mother, Marissa, who grew up in Shanghai and begrudgingly moved with her young daughter to the United States to be with her first husband (who eventually cheated on her), is now engaged to a 48-year-old tech guru and “ABC” — a.k.a. American-born Chinese — and has chosen Kathleen to be her maid of honor.

The heated tiffs that erupt during the wedding-planning process over quintessential mother/daughter topics — Marissa’s penny-pinching habits and old-world values versus Kathleen’s fully assimilated worldview; Marissa’s broken English versus Kathleen’s disregard for learning Mandarin as a way to understand her heritage; Marissa’s harping on Kathleen to lock in a career and find a husband — resonate not just because they spotlight the divide that often exists in first-generation immigrant families, but also because Xie nails the nuances perfectly.

As in this quote about her mother: “To her, my pursuit of happiness was lazy and wayward. To me, her insistence on stability was materialistic and myopic.”

“控股模式”不是一本回忆录。但是写在the first person and full of Kathleen’s frustrations, longing, and, yes, unbridled feelings about her complicated relationship with her mother, it almost reads like one.

In fact, in an article she wrote for the Atlantic, Xie, who was born in Shanghai and came to America with her parents when she was young — as Kathleen does — links the themes in this novel to the obstacles she experienced with her mother while growing up.

Her inspiration is telling. As she wrote in the Atlantic piece: “Though my mom is notoriously loquacious, she seldom spoke about her youth in 1960s and ’70s Shanghai. … Writing ‘Holding Pattern’ gave me a reason to mine for details about that time and place, and a tool with which to dig. Researching the book has been a way to penetrate that silence and find, through storytelling, a way to convey and recognize our love.”

Alexis Burling is a freelance writer.