PIPETTE

Pipette by Kim Chinquee is a fast-paced, intelligently crafted tale that follows a young woman as she struggles to get a foothold after moving out of her boyfriend's home. She has moved away from his threatening behavior, which she has, hitherto, ignored by playing nice. She is a writer and an English professor who has to accept a temporary job as a lab technician. Here she excels in her pipetting abilities. With the Covid-19 pandemic tearing the country apart, the protagonist explores activities that allow her to reinvent herself — swimming, biking, running, skiing, and the company of her dogs — while exploring past -trauma and relationships.

Fans of flash fiction will adore Kim Chinquee's Pipette, a novel rooted in humanity and brimming with realism, a tale of resilience and a woman's journey toward recreating herself from the broken pieces of her humanity. The setting against the backdrop of the pandemic is vividly drawn and the protagonist's activities reflect this reality, like remote teaching and the persistent sense of solitude that permeates the writing. Readers who have suffered trauma and been hurt in their relationships will instantly connect with the narrator. The engrossing first-person narrative voice casts a spell on readers and makes it hard to put this book down. I loved the timely paragraph breaks, the short chapters, and the dazzling prose, enriched by cleverly crafted streams of consciousness.