Mark Athitakis, Special for USA TODAY Published 7:00 a.m. ET March 30, 2020

Days of Distraction, by Alexandra Chang.(Photo: Ecco)

Jing Jing, narrator of Alexandra Changs spiky and contemplative debut novel, Days of Distraction (Ecco, 336 pp., out of four), is a tech journalist. And like every tech journalist, part of her job is worrying about how many people are reading her. I am consistently middling, with the occasional bump, she notes.

Shes talking about page views, but shes also talking about everything. As a Chinese American woman on a staff with few people of color, shes underpaid and promised a raise ... someday. Shes scraping by in San Francisco and wants to move, but her living situation is a function of her boyfriend, J, whos applying to Ph.D. programs in biochemistry. Her parents have split, with her father living back in China and imploring her to visit. But she feels too at odds with herself to make a decision to go.

Until she has her life sorted out, her work is a series of racist microaggressions and banal job tasks. I post about an app-controlled massage pillow, an app-controlled oven, an app-controlled blood pressure monitor, an app-controlled fork, she writes. Sometimes the bumps are potholes.

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This seems like extremely thin fictional material, but Chang has plainly inhaled the work a generation of contemporary novelists Jenny Offill, Rachel Cusk, Dana Spiotta with a knack for making gripping fiction out of banality. The lack of outward drama in Days of Distraction belies the stormy consciousness of a woman whos struggling to define her identity as others try to do the job for her.

A main trigger for Jing Jings reckoning is Js landing a slot in Cornells biochemistry program. To spell her loneliness in upstate New York, she takes a job at a history museum, where she stumbles on a photo of Kin Yamei, a pioneering Chinese American doctor with a fiercely independent streak. (Her divorce was the stuff of national news in 1904.) Kin isnt exactly a mirror for Jing Jing though she does have second thoughts about her relationship with J but she helps her feel less alone in her disconnection.

Early on, she craves Js assuredness as a white man: If there were an app that let me see the world as J sees the world, Id pay more than two dollars for it and would give it five out of five stars, she writes. But no one filter will resolve her identity. Visiting her father in China is not the revelation she hopes for, and the country reveals its own class and racial divides, not to mention dads prattling on about meals. What I wanted were answers, she thinks, and all Im getting is food commentary.

Author Alexandra Chang(Photo: Alana Davis)

Changs strength is her ability to give a sense of confusion contours: Jing Jings observations are pointed, witty, and free of easy resolutions. And Changs deadpan style offers up moments of absurd humor. (A former editor offers up some work: Do you want to do a roundup review of mechanical pencils? No rush, its evergreen.)

Ultimately, though, Chang shows the challenge of trying to raise issues about racism that even those closest to her wish to avoid. Struggling to spark a conversation nobody wants to have, she conducts an engrossing one with herself.

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Review: A Chinese American woman grapples with race, romance in 'Days of Distraction' - USA TODAY