A pastor’s wife. A dying auntie. A teenage cancer patient. These are some of the women in Diana Xin’s Book of Exemplary Women. They’re not movie stars or CEOs or community leaders. They have not accomplished noteworthy things. They talk to ghosts, hunger after vampires, and are jealous of the dead. They eschew their mothers and chase unavailable men. Their behavior is often far from exemplary. But what they are is fully, heartrendingly human. And for that, we must admire them.
Individually, the stories in this collection are wide-ranging, from dating profiles of the Brothers Karamazov to a daughter navigating her mother’s transition into memory care. But collectively they form a powerful tale of longing. Over and over again, we meet women who are afraid: Afraid of being forgotten. Afraid of being left behind. Afraid of dying. Afraid of living. They long to be seen. They long to be loved. And they long to know that they’ll be remembered.
The pull between life and death is a constant theme throughout the collection. Two of the stories feature trios of girls trying to keep the spirit of a departed fourth friend alive in some way. There is a power granted to the dead in these stories as we see grief that verges on envy. “Nothing could cut her,” we are told, “because nothing was worse than what her own dark materials had already wrought.” In dying there is safety from all the pain and chaos that is life.
But Xin is far from a nihilist. We are not being asked to go gently into that good night. In fact, what we encounter in many of these stories is women who are poised to hurtle forward from the crossroads of their lives. Whether it’s the teenager on the cusp of adulthood lusting after her neighbor’s husband, or the woman returned to her hometown and the orbit of her high school sweetheart, Xin’s exemplary women are looking for ways to take control of their lives. Some walk away, some vanish, some begin to clean out basements, but all are seeking a way to continue on.
Ghosts, both real and figurative, are another common thread in the collection. The only set of characters that appear through multiple stories are a ghost and the three generations of women he is handed down between. Functioning as a type of receptacle for the traumas of each new generation, this link allows for a captivating exploration of heritage. Twice we see American daughters returning to the China their mothers escaped from. Time and again, these characters return to places left behind in search of belonging, and we begin to see that it is only through embracing the ghosts of our pasts that we can build in our present.
Religion haunts these stories, as well. And it is here that the feeling of longing is perhaps the strongest. These women are not zealots. Most are agnostic, at best. In one story, they are straight-up occultists. Yet, several are entangled with religion through family members. While the shallowness and vindictiveness that can fill religious communities are on sharply observed display here, our women can’t help feeling a certain hunger, perhaps not for the type of worship on offer itself, but for belief. They yearn to believe in something, because belief is a type of belonging.
Book of Exemplary Women will not leave you with role models for your life. It will not give you achievements to aspire towards. But it just might make you feel like you too belong in this compendium of vibrant, messy, haunted, and enduring human beings.
Publisher: YesYes Books
Publication Date: December 1, 2025
Reviewed by B.B. Garin
B. B. Garin is a writer living in Buffalo, NY. Her story collection, New Songs for Old Radios, is available from Wordrunner Press. She is a recipient of the Sara Patton Fiction Stipend from The Writer’s Hotel. Her work has appeared in The Hawai’i Pacific Review, Luna Station Quarterly, Palooka, 3rd Wednesday, Crack the Spine, and more. Connect with her @bb_garin or bbgarin.wordpress.com.