Living Room: A Novel

“A riveting debut novel … Unsentimental yet deeply felt, this tale examines what bubbles under the surface of a supposedly happy Long Island family” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

The follow-up to her highly praised debut story collection, The First Hurt, Rachel Sherman’s Living Room is a beautiful and disarmingly direct portrait of a family in trouble. With the tone of a modern-day Jewish The Ice Storm set in Long Island, imbued with Alice Munro’s fascination with personal history, Living Room is a deep exploration of the ripple effects of mental illness on a family, as well as a look at generational differences in mating and marriage, and a wry, wise look at suburban angst.

“The fractured lives of three generations of women told with zero sentimentality and a huge amount of heart. Living Room is edgy, moving, smart, funny and altogether human. Rachel Sherman is the real deal. ” —Dani Shapiro, New York Times–bestselling author of Inheritance

“Sherman turns her unflinching, unsentimental eye once again on deepest suburbia, where personal history festers rather than heals. [Living Room] hums along, its heavier moments tempered with plenty of dark humour and incisive language; but it’s the intimate character sketches that truly resonate. ” —Time Out (New York)

“Often praised for her lack of sentimentality, Sherman doesn’t hesitate to capture her characters’ weird, unbecoming thoughts … Her writing lends itself to the form: her story structures tight as fists, her prose terse and unadorned. ” —The Rumpus

© 2011 Open City Books (E-bog): 9781890447632

Release date

E-bog: 18. oktober 2011