“The Satisfaction Café” by Kathy Wang
Simon & Schuster
Published July 1, 2025
With a name like “The Satisfaction Café”, I was expecting the easy charm of a beach read. But right there on the very first page of Kathy Wang's new novel comes the line: “Joan had not thought she would stab her husband.” Expectations were duly noted and swiftly shifted.
From the outset, our protagonist Joan leads us through her story with a steely resolve and a wickedly observant eye. Ignored and abused by her philandering father and unhinged mother, Joan somehow manages to get herself to Stanford in 1975. Despite top marks at her Taiwanese high school, her parents had no intention of sending her abroad until her brothers failed out. Joan continues contact with her family because, as Wang writes, “Joan was grateful, as she was a girl and thus not entitled to anything.”
Joan’s loneliness envelops her from the beginning, walking beside her like an old companion. Hoping to escape it, she marries a young man with a pleasant face. At first, she feels content: “Being an adult was delightful,” Joan thinks. “Each new milestone was remarkable and thrilling.” The trick, she learns, is to “award your spouse a victory each day.” Wang introduces us to the character, toeing the line of tragic submissiveness with a hobgoblin mischief aimed at our preconceived notions, especially since we already know he’s going down. When Joan discovers her new husband has interesting if non-consensual bedroom preferences, she declines. He hits her in public. She calmly pulls out a pair of calipers and stabs him (non-fatally), then asks for a divorce. Exit husband number one.
The loneliness returns tenfold, and her peers shun her. “All her life, Joan would be one to face a difficult problem fully and plainly,” Wang writes. “This was a characteristic those close to her would by turns admire and loathe.” That sentiment rings true as we follow Joan’s story, jumping across decades of quiet resilience.
In time, she meets Bill, a man twice her age. Despite or perhaps because of the gap, they work surprisingly well. As Bill’s fourth wife, Joan is instantly dismissed by his family and not expected to last. Amid racist jokes and assumptions that she’s a money-hungry opportunist, Joan’s deadpan observations provide some of the novel’s funniest moments. Wang, a Bay Area native, offers a sharp and hilarious lens on local upper-crust habits. After many years, Joan’s sister-in-law finally deigns to speak to her: “Bridget now spoke to Joan as if they’d experienced something significant together, like high school or a stressful cruise.” Wang’s take and takedown of Bay Area entitlement alone make this book worth the read.
As the story spans five decades, we truly get to examine Joan’s interior world. The loneliness never quite leaves, and she returns to a childhood fantasy of a place that might ease it. She called this imaginary place “The Satisfaction Café”. “Even as a child, Joan’s imagination had not stretched to fantastic outcomes but, rather, a reasonable amount of happiness.”
Though the narrative jumps through time, Joan’s voice remains so grounded, so precise, that the structure is easy to follow and even forgivable. Family tragedies, social missteps, and private misdeeds pile up, all illuminated by Wang’s wit and insight.
“The Satisfaction Café” offers a poignant portrait of a life lived fully, quietly, with few illusions, and often alone. In Wang’s deft hands, that life becomes something extraordinary. “How few truly surprising, lovely moments one receives in a lifetime,” Joan reflects. This beautifully written novel captures those moments and the yearning for them with piercing yet satisfying, grace.
