Significant Others

After growing up in Vancouver, Jack Wang studied in Ontario, Arizona, and Florida before taking up a creative writing position at Ithaca College, in New York. The author of several children’s books, Wang now adds to his bibliography an impressive first book for adults, We Two Alone, with stories that capture significant moments for the sprawling Chinese diaspora. It’s a collection that announces an important new voice in contemporary fiction.

The fast-paced “The Nature of Things” opens in the 1920s with Frank and Alice Yeung, who have “known each other all their lives, ever since they were urchins scrabbling over the one and only playground in Vancouver’s Chinatown.” Then their lives change. With no medical school in the city, Frank travels to Toronto for his degree: “No one was surprised that he wanted to go to medical school, even though he couldn’t be a doctor, not really...