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How do we take stock of a life—by what means and by what measure? This is the question that preoccupies…
Alice, a Taiwanese immigrant in her late thirties. In the off-hours from her day job, she struggles to create a project about the enigmatic downtown performance artist Tehching Hsieh and his monumental yearlong 1980s performance pieces. As she roots deeper into Hsieh's radical use of time and his mysterious disappearance from the art world, her project starts metabolizing events from her own life. She wanders from subway rides to street protests, loses touch with a friend, and becomes a caretaker for her stepfather, a Vietnam vet whose dream of making traditional Chinese furniture dissolved in alcoholism and dementia. Moving between present-day and 1980s New York City, with detours to Silicon Valley and the Venice Biennale, Activities of Daily Living is a startlingly precise, vivid, and tender examination of the passage of time
How do you grieve an absence? From the award-winning author of The Old Drift, &“a piercing, sharply written novel about…
the conjuring power of loss&” (Raven Leilani, author of Luster).&“A genuine tour de force . . . What seems at first a meditation on family trauma unfolds through the urgency of an amnesiac puzzle-thriller, then a violently compelling love story.&”—Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless BrooklynNamed One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2022 by More than a Dozen Publications, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, People, New York magazine, USA Today, and TimeI don&’t want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt. Cassandra Williams is twelve; her little brother, Wayne, is seven. One day, when they&’re alone together, there is an accident and Wayne is lost forever. His body is never recovered. The missing boy cleaves the family with doubt. Their father leaves, starts another family elsewhere. But their mother can&’t give up hope and launches an organization dedicated to missing children. As C grows older, she sees her brother everywhere: in bistros, airplane aisles, subway cars. Here is her brother&’s face, the light in his eyes, the way he seems to recognize her, too. But it can&’t be, of course. Or can it? Then one day, in another accident, C meets a man both mysterious and familiar, a man who is also searching for someone and for his own place in the world. His name is Wayne. Namwali Serpell&’s remarkable new novel captures the uncanny experience of grief, the way the past breaks over the present like waves in the sea. The Furrows is a bold exploration of memory and mourning that twists unexpectedly into a story of mistaken identity, double consciousness, and the wishful—and sometimes willful—longing for reunion with those we&’ve lost.
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • An orphan grapples with gender, siblinghood, family, and coming-of-age as a Muslim in…
America in this lyrical debut novel that &“shimmers with love&” (Los Angeles Times), from the acclaimed author of If They Come For Us &“Haunting . . . a knife-sharp story of self-discovery.&”—PeopleIn this heartrending, lyrical debut work of fiction, Fatimah Asghar traces the intense bond of three orphaned siblings who, after their parents die, are left to raise one another. The youngest, Kausar, grapples with the incomprehensible loss of their parents as she also charts out her own understanding of gender; Aisha, the middle sister, spars with her &“crybaby&” younger sibling as she desperately tries to hold on to her sense of family in an impossible situation; and Noreen, the eldest, does her best in the role of sister-mother while also trying to create a life for herself, on her own terms.As Kausar grows up, she must contend with the collision of her private and public worlds, and choose whether to remain in the life of love, sorrow, and codependency that she&’s known or carve out a new path for herself. When We Were Sisters tenderly examines the bonds and fractures of sisterhood, names the perils of being three Muslim American girls alone against the world, and ultimately illustrates how those who&’ve lost everything might still make homes in one another.LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE
Finalist for the 2023 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel Finalist for the 2023 Gotham Book Prize Longlisted for the 2023…
Carol Shields Prize Longlisted for the 2022 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A Vogue Best Book of the Year A "beguiling and brilliant" (Viet Thanh Nguyen) debut novel on the interconnection between art, work, care, and the passage of time.How do we take stock of a life—by what means, and by what measure? This is the question that preoccupies Alice, a Taiwanese immigrant in her late thirties. In the off-hours from her day job, Alice struggles to create a project about the enigmatic downtown performance artist Tehching Hsieh and his monumental, yearlong 1980s performance pieces. Meanwhile, she becomes the caretaker for her aging stepfather, a Vietnam vet whose dream of making traditional Chinese furniture dissolved in alcoholism and dementia.As Alice roots deeper into Hsieh’s radical use of time—in one piece, the artist confined himself to a cell for a year; in the next, he punched a time clock every hour, on the hour, for a year—and his mysterious disappearance from the art world, her project starts metabolizing events from her own life. She wanders from subway rides to street protests, loses touch with a friend, and tenderly observes her father’s slow decline.Moving between present-day and 1980s New York City, with detours to Silicon Valley and the Venice Biennale, this vivid debut announces Lisa Hsiao Chen as an audacious new talent. Activities of Daily Living is a lucid, intimate examination of the creative life and the passage of time.