Right at the start of Mike Fu’s debut novel, Masquerade, Meadow finds a strange book called The Masquerade — written by someone with his same name.
In a rush to catch the plane to visit his parents in Shanghai, he stuffs the book in his bag. As he reads it, he finds uncanny parallels between his life and the novel.
Dream-like, Masquerade begins somewhat aimless, introducing small mysteries and oddities that provide an unnerving background hum to an otherwise aimless plot. Like Meadow, we’re not sure where this is all going, or what is going to prove important later, though the occasional foreshadowing reminds us there’s a bigger issue at hand.
There’s a disappearance. There’s an apparent doppelganger, and maybe a ghost, too. And a strange mirror haunts Meadow’s dreams.