A Reason to See You Again
From New York Times bestselling author Jami Attenberg comes a dazzling novel of family, following a troubled mother and her two daughters over forty years and through a swiftly changing American landscape as they seek lives they can fully claim as their own.
The women of the Cohen family are in crisis. Triggered by the death of their patriarch, Rudy, the glue that held them all together, everyone’s lives soon take a dramatic turn.
Shelly, the younger of the two Cohen sisters, runs off to the West Coast to immerse herself in the emerging (and lucrative) world of technology. Her sister, Nancy, gets married at the age of twenty-one to a traveling salesman with a shadowy lifestyle, while their mother, Frieda, hurls herself into a boozy, troubled existence in Miami, trying to forget the past even as it haunts her.
But they each learn in different ways that running from the past can’t save you—and then must make life-altering decisions about what they want their family to be and what they need to move forward.
Beginning in the 1970s and spanning forty years, A Reason to See You Again takes the reader on a kaleidoscopic journey through motherhood, the American workforce, the tech industry, the self-help movement, inherited trauma, the ever-evolving ways we communicate with one another, and the many unexpected forms that love can take.
“I loved leaping through time with the four Cohen women—Frieda, Nancy, Shelly, and Jess. Each woman is intelligent and self-sabotaging—the way we all can be—and they love each other fiercely, often from a careful distance. Attenberg’s writing is sharp and incisive—it’s a pleasure to watch the patterns she created unfold over forty years of these women’s lives.” — Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful and Dear Edward
-
A Most Anticipated Book from: New York Times, People, Associated Press, Time, Saturday Evening Post, Real Simple, Book Bub, * Alta
“A moving epic about the endurance of family love.” - Real Simple
“[A] wry novel about love, loss, and inherited trauma.” - Time
“[A] dramatic, page-turning novel.” - People
“I loved leaping through time with the four Cohen women—Frieda, Nancy, Shelly, and Jess. Each woman is intelligent and self-sabotaging—the way we all can be—and they love each other fiercely, often from a careful distance. Attenberg’s writing is sharp and incisive—it’s a pleasure to watch the patterns she created unfold over forty years of these women’s lives.” - Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful and Dear Edward
"Entertaining and empathetic. . . . Attenberg knows how to imperil her characters and love them at the same time. . . . Readers will happily sit with these women through it all.” - Booklist (starred review)
“Attenberg knows where to shine a spotlight to reveal characters' personalities and dynamics . . . . [Her] characters are as loveable as they are maddening, and the combination of choices and luck makes the novel's events feel as random—and genuine—as real life. . . . [A] masterful dysfunctional family story.” - Shelf Awareness
“The vicissitudes of [Attenberg’s] characters are undeniably absorbing.” - Kirkus Reviews
"When their father passes, the Cohen sisters and their mother seem rudderless and strike out in opposite directions. Spanning 40 years, this moving saga asks if love can heal brokenness." - Saturday Evening Post
“Attenberg’s nuanced latest . . . . is carried along by deliciously realistic descriptions of the Cohens’ complex relationships. It’s an admirable portrait of a distinctly unhappy family.” - Publishers Weekly
“Glimmers of humor lift a narrative that time-hops and head-hops, as the Cohen women come together and fall apart, squabble and make up. . . . Attenberg’s fans will enjoy this novel, as will those who like sharply observed dysfunctional mother-daughter stories.” - Library Journal
1000 Words: A Writer's Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round
A USA TODAY Bestseller / A Washington Post Bestseller
Inspired by Jami Attenberg’s wildly popular literary movement #1000WordsofSummer, this writer’s guide features encouraging essays on creativity, productivity, and writing from acclaimed authors including Roxane Gay, Lauren Groff, Celeste Ng, Meg Wolitzer, and Carmen Maria Machado.
In 2018, novelist Jami Attenberg, faced with a looming deadline, needed writing inspiration. Using a bootcamp model, she and a friend set out to write one thousand words daily for two weeks straight. They opened this practice to Attenberg’s online community and soon hundreds then thousands of people started using the #1000WordsofSummer hashtag to track their work and support one another. What began as a simple challenge between two friends has become a literary movement—write 1,000 words per day without judgment, or bias, or concerns about writer’s block, and see what comes of it.
1000 Words is the book-length extension of this movement. It is about becoming—and staying—motivated, discovering yourself and your creative desires, and approaching your craft from a new direction. It features advice from more than fifty well-known writers, including New York Times bestsellers, Pulitzer Prize winners, and stars of the literary world. Framing these letters are words of wisdom and encouragement, plus specific strategies, from Attenberg on how to carve out a creative path for yourself all year round.
Paired with vibrant word art illustrations, 1000 Words is an accessible and motivational craft book that allows you to open any page and get a quick and fulfilling hit of inspiration.
Featuring Roxane Gay, Bryan Washington, Susan Orlean, Maris Kreizman, Sara Novic, Rumaan Alam, Lauren Oyler, Emma Straub, Christopher Gonzales, Benjamin Percy, Mira Jacob, Laura van den Berg, Carmen Maria Machado, Courtney Sullivan, Rebecca Carroll, Ada Limon, R.O. Kwon, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Elissa Washuta, Alexander Chee, Maggie Shipstead, Deesha Philyaw, Jasmine Guillory, Kristen Arnett, Attica Locke, Megan Abbott, Min Jin Lee, Lauren Groff, Andrew Sean Greer, Camille Dungy, Megan Giddings, Isaac Fitsgerald, Hannah Tinti, Michael H. Weber, Celeste Ng, Elizabeth McCracken, Will Leitch, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Morgan Parker, Kiese Laymon, Melissa Febos, Alissa Nutting, Liz Moore, Laila Lalami, Megan Mayhew Berman, Rebecca Makkai, Meg Wolitzer, Mychal Denzel Smith, Josh Gondelman, and Dantiel W. Moniz.
-
"Devotees of Attenberg’s fiction (All Grown Up, All This Could Be Yours, many others), and her pandemic-sparked newsletter, Craft Talk, have used her 1000-words-a-day-in-summer model to push novel and book projects along, helped by Attenberg’s feel-good approach to the sweaty toil of ~generative~ work. This offshoot of the project stretches the approach to get you through the year and includes tips from other Names like comedian and essayist Josh Gondelman. It will be the new Bird by Bird, you heard it here first." - Lit Hub
“Jami Attenberg’s new writing guide [is] bound with tender, delicious wisdom from fellow authors Lauren Groff, Roxane Gay, Alexander Chee, and literally dozens of others... a handful of our culture’s most brilliant literary minds. Where the book—and Attenberg, by extension—truly triumphs is not through revelatory advice but in simple, earnest insistence." - Elle
“Because Attenberg’s own entries appear throughout the book, it’s her authorial voice that makes 1,000 Words feel cohesive. Her piece of writer advice (perhaps best understood as encouragements) are presented under simple headings, such as “When to Write About Something Personal,” “Reading Your Work out Lous,” and “Giving Criticism.” Sometimes, she’s the parent sitting in the stands shouting your name and rooting for you, and at others, she’s the football coach standing on the sidelines, dishing out tough love.” - Johns Hopkins Magazine
"Jami Attenberg has taken her wildly popular online writing movement #1000wordsofsummer, and turned it into a book of advice and inspiration for writers. More than 50 writers contributed their wisdom, including Carmen Maria Machado, Roxane Gay, Lauren Groff, and Celeste Ng." - Bookriot
“1000 Words collects and distills that project into a motivational volume every writer should keep close at hand.” - BookPage, starred review
“Attenberg offers up a kinetic, atmospheric river of inspiring words designed to help writers keep churning out prose” - Shelf Awareness, starred review
“A fantastic set of essays… Readers of this collection will feel surrounded and bolstered by like-minded people who have been in the trenches.” -Booklist, Starred Review
“I’ve admired Jami Attenberg for ages. Now I’m a super-fan. I started reading [1000 Words] last night when I should have been reading for work and I cannot wait to get back to it today. It is inspiring, motivating, comforting, encouraging, and will earn a permanent spot on your bookshelf. Right up there with Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and Stephen King’s On Writing.” – Kristyn Kusek Lewis, editor at Real Simple and author of Perfect Happiness
“[An] encouraging handbook… Aspiring writers will appreciate Attenberg’s cheerleading.” -Publisher's Weekly
I Came All This Way to Meet You, Writing Myself Home
In this brilliant, fierce, and funny memoir of transformation, Jami Attenberg—described as a “master of modern fiction” (Entertainment Weekly) and the “poet laureate of difficult families” (Kirkus Reviews)—reveals the defining moments that pushed her to create a life, and voice, she could claim for herself. What does it take to devote oneself to art? What does it mean to own one’s ideas? What does the world look like for a woman moving solo through it?
As the daughter of a traveling salesman in the Midwest, Attenberg was drawn to a life on the road. Frustrated by quotidian jobs and hungry for inspiration and fresh experiences, her wanderlust led her across the country and eventually on travels around the globe. Through it all she grapples with questions of mortality, otherworldliness, and what we leave behind.
It is during these adventures that she begins to reflect on the experiences of her youth—the trauma, the challenges, the risks she has taken. Driving across America by herself on self-funded book tours, sometimes crashing on couches when she was broke, she keeps writing: in researching articles for magazines, jotting down ideas for novels, and refining her craft, she grows as an artist and increasingly learns to trust her gut and, ultimately, herself.
Exploring themes of friendship, independence, class, and drive, I Came All This Way to Meet You is an inspiring story of finding one’s way home—emotionally, artistically, and physically—and an examination of art and individuality that will resonate with anyone determined to listen to their own creative calling.
-
“Jami Attenberg is undoubtedly a writer's writer and a phenomenal talent. I Came All This Way To Meet You showcases all the very best of her gifts, bringing intimacy to the forefront of the work, asking the reader to stay close, pay attention, to learn. There is so much beauty in her craft; a tenderness present even on the sentence level. The book is an embrace. It is a love letter to work and to friendship. I Came All This Way To Meet You is a compelling literary treasure and Attenberg is a real wonder.” - Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things and With Teeth
“I Came All This Way To Meet You is a love story; it shows us a way to love art and our lives and our souls...It’s Eat Pray Love for Nick Cave fans." - Emily Flake, New Yorker cartoonist and author of That Was Awkward
"A wise and witty glimpse behind the travels and travails of one of our most beloved contemporary novelists. I Came All This Way To Meet You brims with humor, humility, pathos, and intelligence. I gulped down every page and finished sated, as if I'd spent a long weekend with a dear friend." - Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood
"I Came All This Way to Meet You—which features the shining prose that characterizes Attenberg's fiction, while allowing us a glimpse behind the curtain of her process and her personal history—is one of the most artistically invigorating books I've read in years. It made me want to sit down and write." - Liz Moore, author of Long Bright River
“This stunning work explores home not solely as geographic place but also as a mobile metaphor for the relationships we consistently run to and away from. Jami Attenberg cements her place as one of our greatest, most agile writers.”
- Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy and Long Division
“A remarkable memoir I’ll be re-reading forever.” - Ashley C. Ford, author of Somebody's Daughter
All This Could Be Yours
On the Best of Fall lists from People, Vogue, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, New York, Observer, Bust, Nylon, New York Post, Pop Sugar and more.
“If I know why they are the way they are, then maybe I can learn why I am the way I am,” says Alex Tuchman of her parents. Now that her father, Victor, is on his deathbed, Alex—a strong-headed lawyer, devoted mother, and loving sister—feels she can finally unearth the secrets of who Victor is and what he did over the course of his life and career. (A power-hungry real estate developer, he is, by all accounts, a bad man.) She travels to New Orleans to be with her family, but mostly to interrogate her tight-lipped mother, Barbra.
As Barbra fends off Alex’s unrelenting questions, she reflects on her tumultuous life with Victor. Meanwhile Gary, Alex’s brother, is incommunicado, trying to get his movie career off the ground in Los Angeles. And Gary’s wife, Twyla, is having a nervous breakdown, buying up all the lipstick in drugstores around New Orleans and bursting into crying fits. Dysfunction is at its peak. As family members grapple with Victor’s history, they must figure out a way to move forward—with one another, for themselves, and for the sake of their children.
All This Could Be Yours is a timely, piercing exploration of what it means to be caught in the web of a toxic man who abused his power; it shows how those webs can entangle a family for generations, and what it takes to—maybe, hopefully—break free. With her signature “sparkling prose” (Marie Claire) and incisive wit, Jami Attenberg deftly explores one of the most important subjects of our age.
-
“Prickly and unsentimental, but never quite hopeless, Attenberg poet laureate of difficult families, captures the relentlessly lonely beauty of being alive.” - Kirkus, starred review
“Dazzling . . . A delectable family saga.” - Publisher’s Weekly, starred review
“An ambitious and utterly delectable novel about families and their secrets that opens up, pleasurably, like a set of nesting dolls." - Kelly Link, author of Get In Trouble
“Jami Attenberg's work is so deeply attuned to humans and our imperfect attempts to love each other. All This Could Be Yours is populated by Attenberg's pitch-perfect characters; flawed, recognizable people dealing with big topics--death, family, sex, love--and Attenberg handles it all with an expert touch and a keen sense of what, despite all the sadness and secrets, keeps people connected, striving for moments of beauty and tenderness in a dark world.” - Emma Cline, author of The Girls
“Set against the vivid backdrop of New Orleans, Jami Attenberg’s extraordinary new novel All This Could Be Yours is a deep dive into fractured family dynamics. In alternating voices, Attenberg expertly weaves together a chorus of love, betrayal and inheritance, each chapter a prism turned, revealing a new spectrum of secrets. Interspersed are gorgeous excavations into fleeting moments with strangers—the checkout clerks and ferry conductors passing through our lives—connecting this singular family into the larger web of life, where everyone is worthy of understanding and no one is without a soul.” - Hannah Tinti, author of The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
“Attenberg crafts families with stunning nuance and depth. She pays tribute to unseen New Orleans with a gaze on the powerful and the downtrodden. Her characters are unforgettable, their predicaments are captivating and their journeys shed light on the inner workings of America.” - Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, author of A Kind of Freedom
“Jami Attenberg writes with an unflinching and generous spirit that brings to mind Grace Paley. All This Could Be Yours traces the lasting turmoil of a flawed marriage, and is another marvel of intelligence, humor, and soul.” - Zachary Lazar, author of Vengeance and Sway
"No one understands the contradictions of the human heart and how our grace and our failures reverberate through our families better than Jami Attenberg. And no one writes about our grace and failures with humor and compassion better than her either. Also—this book’s structure is brilliant." - Attica Locke, author of Heaven, My Home
All Grown Up
National Bestseller, The New Atlantic Indie Bestseller List, Southern California Independent Booksellers Association Bestseller, The Northern California Indie Bestseller List, An Amazon Top Ten Best Book of the Month, An IndieNext List Pick, An iBookstore Best Book of the Month, A Book of the Month Club Selection, A Flavorwire Must-Read Book for March, A Refinery29 Pick for March, A Read It Forward “Book We’re Looking Forward to in 2017”, A Martha Stewart Living “Page Turner for 2017”, A Bustle Most Anticipated Novel for 2017, A Bustle Most Anticipated Feminist Book Release for 2017, An Elle.com Most Anticipated Novel for 2017, A Glamour Best Book to Read in 2017, A Chicago Tribune “34 Books We’re Most Excited About in 2017”, A Nylon “50 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2017”, A The Millions Most Anticipated Book, A Book Riot Most Anticipated Book, A Chicago Reader “Book We Can’t Wait to Read in 2017”, A Globe “Book We Can’t Wait to Read in 2017”
Who is Andrea Bern? When her therapist asks the question, Andrea knows the right things to say: she’s a designer, a friend, a daughter, a sister. But it’s what she leaves unsaid—she’s alone, a drinker, a former artist, a shrieker in bed, captain of the sinking ship that is her flesh—that feels the most true. Everyone around her seems to have an entirely different idea of what it means to be an adult: her best friend, Indigo, is getting married; her brother—who miraculously seems unscathed by their shared tumultuous childhood—and sister-in-law are having a hoped-for baby; and her friend Matthew continues to wholly devote himself to making dark paintings at the cost of being flat broke.
But when Andrea’s niece finally arrives, born with a heartbreaking ailment, the Bern family is forced to reexamine what really matters. Will this drive them together or tear them apart? Told in gut-wrenchingly honest, mordantly comic vignettes, All Grown Up is a breathtaking display of Jami Attenberg’s power as a storyteller, a whip-smart examination of one woman’s life, lived entirely on her own terms.
-
“Deeply enjoyable.”—Marisa Meltzer, Elle
“Bravo to Attenberg, who, with hilarity and honesty, tells the story of an adult woman who wants what she wants, not what she’s supposed to want.”—Marie Claire
“All Grown Up [is] a smart, funny/sad and unflinchingly honest novel about a single New Yorker. . . . In sparkling prose, [Attenberg] brings this wonderful character so fully to life that after the book ended, I found myself wishing Andrea well as if she were a good friend and wondering what she would do next.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Thank you, Jami Attenberg, for pushing back against society’s assumptions about what is allowed to matter in our lives. For giving us a different kind of narrative. All Grown Up is not all fluffy and lovely. It turns out that we have other stories — we single people. We human beings.”—Bustle
“Revolutionary…. [A] perceptive study of love, sacrifice, and what it really means to be an adult.”—Tablet
“Jami Attenberg deftly travels inside the head of a 39-year-old woman who has no interest in doing what she’s supposed to do and follows her heart instead of her mind—a story that’s sexy, charming, and impossible to put down.”—Newsweek
“Powerful…All Grown Up is so intimately [and] sharply observed.”—Vogue
“Attenberg is one of our finest contemporary storytellers, and here, with her trademark clever, witty voice, she tackles the age-old question plaguing people of all ages: When do we know if we’re actually all grown up?”—Nylon, “50 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2017”
“Smart, heartfelt, and really freakin’ funny.”—Sara Nović, Elle.com, “25 Most Anticipated Books by Women for 2017”
“Attenberg knows how to make a reader laugh and feel. This novel takes a hard look at what it means to be a woman living on her own terms.”—Lisa Lucas, Martha Stewart Living, “Page Turners for 2017”
“I read it start to finish in one go, I can’t think of another book I’ve done that about recently.”—Mary Louise Kelly, NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday
“Jami Attenberg will have you laughing, cursing, and ranting right along with her book's vibrant main character, Andrea — a 39-year-old single New Yorker trying to figure out how hold her life together. (And trying to figure out what 'having your life together' even means.) This book has got serious spunk.”—Bustle, “The 9 Best Fiction Books Coming Out in March”
“Amidst the gems of mordant wit, All Grown Up plumbs deeper, darker veins, the ready ease with which sex (and drugs and alcohol) can become coping mechanisms, the specter of being stuck forever as everyone else moves on, “architecting new lives.” Do yourself a favor and buy this book.”—Tomi Obaro, Buzzfeed Books
“Told in smart and funny vignettes, All Grown Up is an examination of what it means to be a woman and a grown-up in today's times. This deceptively short novel will stay with you long after finishing the last page.”—Popsugar, “26 Hot New Books You'll Want to Get Your Hands On This Spring”
“With a flair for understatement and crack timing, she makes Andrea Bern immensely flawed but highly resilient and self-aware, capable of reflecting on the lack of ballast in her life without drowning in clichés or Issues. It’s essential to the story that Andrea is unreservedly single; what makes it so good is that she’s absolutely singular.”—Vulture, "8 Books You Need to Read This March"
“With a satirical voice and astounding pathos, Attenberg’s latest protagonist draws readers into the enthralling and thought-provoking world she inhabits, against the backdrop of an important social conversation about contemporary gender roles.”—Harpers Bazaar
“Fantastic–and wholly unlike anything else she’s written.”—Vol.1 Brooklyn
“Attenberg’s latest takes on the ridiculous standards we set for ourselves, all with humor and aching relatability.”—PureWow
“All Grown Up is a smart, addictive, hilarious and relevant novel.”—Meredith Maran, Washington Post
“Andrea, 39, is totally single. No kids, no men, nothing keeping her from living her life to its full potential, which she does. Until her niece is born with a tragic illness, and Andrea's whole family is forced to confront their values, their lifestyles, and their choices. Told in vignettes, All Grown Up asks what happens after you've got the whole "adult" thing under control.”—Glamour, “Best Books to Read in 2017”
"This is where Attenberg’s brilliance lies: in her ability to mix tenderness with tragicomedy; to find what’s funny in the funereal; to render the dignity of those who fear they’ve lost it. . . . Outstanding.”—Haaretz
“Funny, tragic and delightful.”—Chicago Tribune
“Attenberg captures the kaleidoscopic flow of Andrea’s life in spare and witty vignettes that build to a surprising and moving conclusion.”—Jane Ciabattari, “Ten Books You Should Read in March,” BBC.com
“Hilarious, courageous and mesmerizing from page one, ALL GROWN UP is a little gem that packs a devastating wallop. It’s that rare book I’m dying to give all my friends so we can discuss it deep into the night. I’m in awe of Jami Attenberg.”—Maria Semple, author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette?
“Jami Attenberg's sharply drawn protagonist, Andrea, has such a riveting, propulsive voice that ALL GROWN UP is hard to put down, but I urge you to resist reading it in one sitting. Both the prose and the author’s knowing excavation of one woman’s desires, compromises, strengths and fears deserve closer attention. Like Andrea herself, this novel is beautiful and brutal, intelligent and funny, frank and sexy.”—Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of The Nest
"Jami Attenberg's Andrea is the most addicting female protagonist voice I have read in years, with her cutting observations on human relationships. This witty journey through a mess of men, female friendships, family and boozy urban existence positions the single girl not as object to be fixed but as contemporary sage and seer: the ultimate witness of truth in love today."—Melissa Broder, author of So Sad Today
“Jami Attenberg has written her frankest, funniest, and most riveting and heartbreaking book yet. In Andrea, she has created a character women will be talking about for years; she has opened the door for us to see ourselves in literature in a new way, writing with skill and fearlessness few others can match.”—Emily Gould, author of Friendship
“What a voice. Honest and hilarious, unflinching and unapologetic, Jami Attenberg writes what it is to be single, sexual, and childfree by choice. I read the first page of ALL GROWN UP and knew the novelist was going to outdo herself. I am happy to report that she most certainly did.”—Helen Ellis, author of American Housewife
“Jami Attenberg’s ALL GROWN UP is one part Denis Johnson, one part Grace Paley, but all her. Every sentence pulls taut and glows--electric, gossipy, searing fun that is also a map to how to be more human.”—Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night
“Is all life junk - sparkly and seductive and devastating - just waiting to be told correctly by someone who will hold our hand and walk with us a while confirming that what we’re living is true. This is a good proud urban book, a sad and specific blast for the fearless to read. Thank you Jami.”—Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls
saint mazie
Meet Mazie Phillips: big-hearted and bawdy, she's the truth-telling proprietress of The Venice, the famed New York City movie theater. It's the Jazz Age, with romance and booze aplenty--even when Prohibition kicks in--and Mazie never turns down a night on the town. But her high spirits mask a childhood rooted in poverty, and her diary, always close at hand, holds her dearest secrets.
When the Great Depression hits, Mazie's life is on the brink of transformation. Addicts and bums roam the Bowery; homelessness is rampant. If Mazie won't help them, then who? When she opens the doors of The Venice to those in need, this ticket taking, fun-time girl becomes the beating heart of the Lower East Side, and in defining one neighborhood helps define the city.
Then, more than ninety years after Mazie began her diary, it's discovered by a documentarian in search of a good story. Who was Mazie Phillips, really? A chorus of voices from the past and present fill in some of the mysterious blanks of her adventurous life.
Inspired by the life of a woman who was profiled in Joseph Mitchell's classic Up in the Old Hotel, Saint Mazie is infused with Jami Attenberg's signature wit, bravery, and heart. Mazie's rise to "sainthood"--and her irrepressible spirit--is unforgettable.
-
"SAINT MAZIE is a love letter to a New York City that doesn't exist anymore-the gritty, working-class Lower East Side and Coney Island that your grandparents might remember...genuine and relatable." -Condé Nast Traveler
"The Middlesteins author Jami Attenberg has traded writing about the Midwest for Jazz Age New York-and, oh, what a glorious swap it is. If you love historical stories with bold language that vividly paint a picture of another era, you'll be so happy to spend your summer days alongside Mazie Phillips, the real-life proprietress of a downtown NYC movie theater called The Venice. Take a peek inside Mazie's diary, and get swept away." - Bustle, "The 17 Best Books of Summer"
"[Attenberg] nails Mazie's irresistible combination of sweet and seedy, tough and tender." - Miami Herald
"[A] gorgeous love letter to the city...a compulsively readable tribute to a memorable and heroic New Yorker." - Vulture
"[F]resh and witty... SAINT MAZIE looks deep into the spirit of generosity. Jami Attenberg's Mazie lives a very big life in a very small space, turning her darkest experiences into something inspiring." - Wall Street Journal
"[I]ngeniously constructed.... An attentive character study that also happens to be rich in city lore and period detail, SAINT MAZIE is an edifying, companionable and moving novel." - Kansas City Star
"A funny, touching novel." - Vanity Fair
"A raw, boisterous, generous novel with a heroine to match and New York in its soul, Saint Mazie offers proof again that Jami Attenberg is a brilliant, lion-hearted storyteller." - Maggie Shipstead, author of Astonish Me and Seating Arrangements
"A terrific novel--touching, funny, big-hearted, just like Mazie herself. It's written with great verve and brio, and I loved the way we circle around and then dig deeper into Mazie's life through the multiple voices and sources. It's Mazie herself, though, who shines the brightest, and who lingers on in the mind and heart, a real diamond in the rough." - Monica Ali, author of Brick Lane and Untold Story
"A winning novel and a lovely tribute to a New Yorker whose only claim to fame is her outsized kindness. Her Mazie is richly imagined and three-dimensional, and in these pages she lives forever." - Los Angeles Times
"An exuberant portrait of an unforgettable woman and the city she loves." - BBC.com
"Attenberg captures Mazie's voice so vividly you can close the book and still hear her talking. She is a tremendous achievement. ...[A] bold, magnificent book about family, altruism, women and freedom, as well as a love letter to New York and a timely social manifesto for the 21st century." - The Guardian
"Attenberg has an impressive ability to capture unique voices and make these characters authentic and distinctive... the voices in Saint Mazie ring out and linger, bringing to life this specific place and time in New York-and American-history." - Dallas Morning News
"Attenberg is a nimble and inventive storyteller with a particular knack for getting at the heart of outsized characters. . . . [she] proves her chops as a historical novelist by perfectly capturing Mazie's jazz-age voice, which ranges from clipped and vulgar to melancholy and lyrical. Attenberg also sidesteps many of the pitfalls of the form: no day-by-day plodding through the decades, no unedited research notes masquerading as dialogue. She resists any plot twist or final revelation to provide a tidy psychological explanation for Mazie Phillips-Gordon sainthood." - Washington Post
"Attenberg's style, at turns lyrical and blunt, is a strong match for Mazie. . . .This voice-pleasantly tinged with jazz age argot, refreshingly modern in its honesty, and always intimate-is Attenberg's great achievement in SAINT MAZIE. ...[A] boisterous, deep, provocative book." - Boston Globe
"Boisterous and compassionate." - O Magazine
"Delightful . . . [an] often ebullient tale about the simple pleasures of a working life. . . . Thanks to the wonderful Jami Attenberg (with an assist from the legendary Joseph Mitchell) Mazie does live on, an actual 20th century New York City saint." - NPR
"Entertaining . . . A fascinating portrait of early 20th-century New York and of an unlikely champion of the dispossessed." - BookPage
"Full of love and drink and dirty sex and nobility.... Attenberg takes Mitchell's witty, colorful piece and spins it into something equally lively and new."--New York Times Book Review
"I loved it to pieces . . . Through an incredible cast of voices, Attenberg gives us the story of Mazie Phillips, the bawdy, brassy broad who runs a New York theater from the Jazz Age through Prohibition and into the Great Depression. Mazie never marries but has admirers aplenty, and she grows from party girl into community fixture as she devotes her time to caring for the homeless and hungry. The frame and structure Attenberg gives her story are as interesting as the story itself, and the whole experience is a delight. Highly recommended!" - Rebecca Joines Schinsky, Book Riot
"I'd love to be Jami Attenberg for a day to see what she sees. The next best thing is to read the touching, funny, and wise SAINT MAZIE, which is as difficult to categorize as the hard-living, heart-breaking, soul-saving ticket taker it is about." - Charlotte Rogan, author of The Lifeboat
"Impressive . . . Attenberg excels at developing Mazie's voice as she grows from an impetuous, witty girl, into a shrewd-yet-selfless character. But the book is largely about the silent tragedies of womanhood, and the different forms love and loneliness can take . . . What Saint Mazie is most concerned with: how to be a human being." - Bust Magazine
"Jami Attenberg is a beautiful, humane, and extremely funny writer, and SAINT MAZIE-the story of a flawed, spiky, golden-hearted, broken-hearted broad, a kind of personification of the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the first years of the 20th century-is a glorious book." - Louisa Young, author of My Dear I Wanted to Tell You
"Jami Attenberg is a master at creating complex and compelling characters. She did it with Edie Middlestein of The Middlesteins, and she's done it again with Mazie Phillips-Gordon of SAINT MAZIE. While Mazie is an actual historical figure, in Attenberg's adept hands, she blossoms as a multidimensional woman who helped the down-and-out in New York City during and after the Depression, while stirring up her own mischief and bad behavior. A wonderful and thoughtful read, as relevant then as it is today, SAINT MAZIE is not to be missed." - B.A. Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of The Art Forger
"SAINT MAZIE is a novel with as much style and moxie as its titular character. I missed Mazie Gordon-Phillips and her family when I was finished reading, but I missed New York, too. By telling this one woman's story, Jami Attenberg has managed to write an ode to New Yorkers of every generation. She is a true poet of the city." - Gabrielle Zevin, author of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
"SAINT MAZIE moves with joy and wonder through the past. This book has such brio, warmth, intelligence and personality it seems a wonder it is made of mere words." - Rebecca Lee, author of Bobcat & Other Stories
"Tender-hearted and loose-living, Mazie is the unlikely guardian angel of New York City's Depression-Era down-and-outs. You'll love this smart, touching novel that brings her world to life." - People
"The hugely talented Jami Attenberg, most recently author of The Middlesteins, has built a novel based on an imagined diary of Mazie Phillips, a Bowery movie-theater proprietress." - New York Magazine
"The real-life Mazie first appeared in a 1940 New Yorker profile by Joseph Mitchell and later again in his seminal collection, "Up in the Old Hotel." Now Mazie's latest, and perhaps more powerful incarnation, is in the novel "Saint Mazie" by Jami Attenberg. Here Mazie continues to grab the lapels and hearts of readers - and we are all the more glad for the shake-up she gives us . . . Achieves immortality in the minds and hearts of readers." - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"This follow-up to Attenberg's beloved novel The Middlesteins shares many of that book's hallmarks: unflinching examinations of some of people's more unflattering qualities, compassion for the same, and a clear love and respect for the journeys we all must go on . . . her work has the same sense of bonhomie and joy as did the original 'Saint' Mazie." - The L Magazine, #1 on the "50 Books You'll Want to Read This Spring and Summer" list
"With SAINT MAZIE, Jami Attenberg has crafted a tale that is somehow both a love song and a gut punch at once, and will leave you all the better for having read it. When I finished reading, I wanted to start all over again." - Therese Anne Fowler, author of Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
the middlesteins
For more than thirty years, Edie and Richard Middlestein shared a solid family life together in the suburbs of Chicago. But now things are splintering apart, for one reason, it seems: Edie's enormous girth. She's obsessed with food--thinking about it, eating it--and if she doesn't stop, she won't have much longer to live.
When Richard abandons his wife, it is up to the next generation to take control. Robin, their schoolteacher daughter, is determined that her father pay for leaving Edie. Benny, an easy-going, pot-smoking family man, just wants to smooth things over. And Rachelle-- a whippet thin perfectionist-- is intent on saving her mother-in-law's life, but this task proves even bigger than planning her twin children's spectacular b'nai mitzvah party. Through it all, they wonder: do Edie's devastating choices rest on her shoulders alone, or are others at fault, too?
With pitch-perfect prose, huge compassion, and sly humor, Jami Attenberg has given us an epic story of marriage, family, and obsession. The Middlesteins explores the hopes and heartbreaks of new and old love, the yearnings of Midwestern America, and our devastating, fascinating preoccupation with food.
-
"THE MIDDLESTEINS had me from its very first pages, but it wasn't until its final pages that I fully appreciated the range of Attenberg's sympathy and the artistry of her storytelling." - Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom
"The Middlesteins is a juicy, delicious, dark smorgasbörd of a novel." - Royal Young, Interview Magazine
"The Middlesteins is a tender, sad and funny look at a family and their mother. In fact, it's so readable, it's practically edible." - Meg Wolitzer, NPR All Things Considered
"[An] irresistible family portrait with piquant social commentary. Kinetic with hilarity and anguish, romance and fury, Attenberg's rapidly consumed yet nourishing novel anatomizes our insatiable hunger for love, meaning, and hope." - Donna Seaman, Booklist (Starred Review)
"[Attenberg's] characters' thoughts-Richard and Benny in particular-seem utterly real, and her wry, observational humor often hits sideways rather than head-on. . . [A] wonderfully messy and layered family portrait." - Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"[A] remarkable feat.... Clear-eyed funny and truthful and deeply moving, especially in the killer-punch of its ending... Refined, economical and beautifully crafted." - Stefan Fleischer, The Buffalo News
"A sharp-tongued, sweet-natured masterpiece of Jewish family life." - Kirkus (Starred Review)
"A smart novel that tackles big issues." - Chicago Tribune (Editor's Choice)
"Attenberg finds ample comic moments in this wry tale about an unraveling marriage. She has a great ear for dialog, and the novel is perfectly paced. . . . [She] seamlessly weaves comedy and tragedy in this warm and engaging family saga of love and loss." - Library Journal
"Blazing, ferocious, and great-hearted. . . .THE MIDDLESTEINS will blow you away." - Lauren Groff, author of Arcadia
"Expansive heart and sly wit... Throughout this poignant novel, the characters wrestle with two defining questions: What do we owe each other after a life together? What do we owe ourselves?" - Abbe Wright, O Magazine
"Funny, compassionate tragicomedy...notable for the nimble way it combines humor and pathos. Attenberg can be wry and sharply funny, but there's a tenderness in her portrayal of her outsized main character and her family." - Yvonne Zipp, Christian Science Monitor
"Hugely enjoyable . . . Attenberg has the Tolstoyan gift for creating life on the page. Sometimes all she needs to capture a soul is a couple of sentences. But the pleasure she takes in these people goes beyond compassion . . . When Attenberg shows us the world through their eyes, they're not just interesting and sympathetic; they're a treat to be with. I didn't want a single one of their narratives to end. . . . The book isn't merely a delight to read: it lifts you up."- - Craig Seligman, Bloomberg News
"Jami Attenberg has a gift for making you sympathize with each and every one of her characters. The result is a rich family portrait that's sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, and gripping all the way through. The Middlesteins are every bit as complex and contradictory as your family, or mine. I'm still thinking about them long after I turned the final page."- - J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Commencement and Maine
"Jami Attenberg writes with startling honesty and haunting compassion about characters caught between desire and obligation. Blunt and beautifully written, THE MIDDLESTEINS peels back the layers of one family's struggle to hold together even as its members fall apart, examining the commitments and betrayals, the guilt and grievances, the wounds and recoveries. Told with great hope and humor, this is a novel about fear and forgiveness, blame and acceptance, the roles we yearn to escape, and the bonds that prove unbreakable. It's a wonderful book." - Aryn Kyle, author of The God of Animals
"Jami Attenberg's comic-tragic portrait of The Middlesteins, a quirky midwestern Jewish family collapsing under burdens of betrayal, desire, and obesity, is delish." - Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair
"The most authentic, endearing fictional portrait of a family in recent memory. . . There is no page of this novel without compassion, empathy, humor and restraint." - Carmela Ciuraru, Dallas Morning News
"This gem of a book is swift, moving and brutally honest, but it has as family-centric moral at its heart: Without family, we are nothing." - Susannah Cahalan, New York Post
"Vibrant . . . Thanks to Attenberg's sure-handed prose, this agile narrative swiftly moves around in time and perspectives . . . Attenberg evokes memorable moments of authentic sadness and tenderness while thoughtfully and comically examining the question of what we inherit from our families. In the case of the Middlesteins, it is many things, including their sometimes-enduring love for each other." - S. Kirk Walsh, San Francisco Chronicle
"With a wit that never mocks and a tenderness that never gushes, [Attenberg] renders this family's ordinary tragedies as something surprisingly affecting... Attenberg is superb at mocking the cliches of middle-class life by giving them the slightest turn to make people suddenly real and wholly sympathetic." - Ron Charles, Washington Post
the melting season
From one of today's hottest novelists and author of the bestselling The Middlesteins -- a provocative story about friendship and self-discovery.
Catherine Madison left her small town in Nebraska after her husband deserted her. She's also left behind her most shameful secrets-of a family and a marriage that have plagued her with self-doubt. On the road, she's trying to become a new person. But running away from the past isn't as easy as she'd hoped. Her journey leads her to Las Vegas, where she forms surprising new friendships that compel her to reveal what she'd sworn she'd keep hidden, and teach her what human connection really means.
-
"Attenberg's narrative voice - a lean, straight-ahead, deadpan tone that cuts cleanly through Catherine's hypocrisy and self-pity like a laser-guided strike - makes The Melting Season singular and disquieting."
-Chicago Tribune"A rich novel, one that begins as a road-trip yarn but then contains enough twists to form a complicated emotional journey."
-Time Out Chicago"Attenberg's imagery is picture perfect and, many times, tragic.Her complex characters are not only relatable but share a journey we have all traveled: leaving home and discovering for the first time who we really are and where we belong."
-Elle.com"With a trail of whiskey and Diet Cokes in her wake, Catherine heads west to leave behind a damaged marriage. Reading about her life in Vegas and her road to self-discovery in this novel feels like peeking at a friend's diary."
-Glamour"Attenberg is a brave, honest writer with scary talent, and this novel about a young woman heading west to escape a failing marriage and a small town is her best yet."
-Courier Journal"An intelligent, moving portrait of a journey to self-awareness, with meaty characters and a refreshing absence of psychobabble."
-Kirkus Reviews"[Attenberg] renders poignant prose and portrays the desperate behavior of her characters with verve."
-Booklist
the kept man
From the author of the bestselling The Middlesteins the novel that's "unabashedly emotional, refreshingly devoid of New York City cynicism, and tenderly funny?" (People).
Jarvis Miller's artist husband has been in a coma for six years. And so, Jarvis has spent these years suspended between hope and grief, paralyzed with longing for a life and a marriage that are slipping away. But then, unexpectedly, Jarvis makes her first new friends in years when she meets the Kept Man Club: three men whose lifestyles are funded by their successful wives, who gather once a week on laundry day. With their help, she reawakens to the city beyond her Brooklyn apartment, past the pitying eyes of her husband's art dealer and his irresponsible best friend as her future begins to take on the irresistible tingles of possibility for the first time in almost a decade. When a shocking discovery casts a different light on her idealized marriage, she's propelled even further down a path that she would never have dared to imagine just months before. Tender, bold, and unabashed, The Kept Man is a compulsively readable novel about love and loss from one of our most dynamic new storytellers.
-
“Attenberg has an admirable sense of fun...Displays a keen ear for dialogue and a half-cynical, half-affectionate tone that makes even the most venal characters likable.” - San Francisco Chronicle
“One finds a great deal to admire here... Ms. Attenberg [is] an able geographer of emotional landscapes.” - New York Sun
“Attenberg has an admirable sense of fun...Displays a keen ear for dialogue and a half-cynical, half-affectionate tone that makes even the most venal characters likable.” - San Francisco Chronicle
“One finds a great deal to admire here... Ms. Attenberg [is] an able geographer of emotional landscapes.” - New York Sun
"Written in relaxed yet fresh prose, Attenberg's debut is unabashedly emotional, refreshingly devoid of New York City cynicism, and tenderly funny." - People
“Told with wit and verve...The Kept Man is a challenge to apathy-it's a novel about remaining constructive in the face of personal change." - Interview
"Attenberg knows how to tell a story that's both socially relevant and a fun read." - Venuszine
"Attenberg gets gallery-land down cold; she also writes of longing and mourning with extraordinary heart...A likable novel marked by a profundity of feeling." - Kirkus Reviews
instant love
"We are all walking around this city with our hearts sadly swimming in our chests, like dying fish on the surface of a still pond. It's enough to make you give up entirely." - from Instant Love
But we don't give up. We keep trying. We're either too stupid to learn from our mistakes or we honestly believe that the next time will be different; it's hard to say which. Driven by the mad hopefulness that is part of the human condition, we are constantly falling in and out of love with a slightly different version of the person who came before. Jami Attenberg chronicles those exact moments with heartbreaking realism in her powerful debut, Instant Love.
Told through the eyes of three young women and their friends and lovers, Instant Love explores what it means to be in love, what it means to be lonely, and what it means to be both at the same time. Holly turns to computer dating to find love even as she thinks wistfully of a former boyfriend who loved her well and fed her ice cream. Maggie recounts the story of her one crazy summer to her disbelieving husband and feels the distance between them grow wider than the void across their king-sized bed. And Sarah Lee remembers the one who got away and the one she ran away from, all the while moving toward the one she can actually love.
As Holly, Maggie, and Sarah Lee move through the rituals of modern love, they have to decide who is worth taking a chance on in a world where things don't fall into place easily, people are often difficult, and disappointment is the rule. Through their stories, Attenberg presents a rare, honest look at love.
-
"A funny but ultimately heartbreaking look at how our society's warped mating rituals can ruin promising young women. This assured debut calls to mind the early work of Tom Perrotta and Denis Johnson, but also rings with echoes of Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro." - Neal Pollack, author of Never Mind the Pollacks
"An exhilarating ride into love's weightless nights and soaring hopes. Jami Attenberg takes us into the hearts of lonely art students, twenty-four-year-old software millionaires, drifting academics, young divorce´es, and dreamy high school girls hanging out at the Taco Bell. These love songs will make you ache and laugh and never sorry you picked up this book." - Martha Sherrill, author of The Ruins of California
"Jami Attenberg reveals sharp, scorched, and darkly funny truths about love (and its side effects) in this totally addictive book. Her cadences are quick, her observations dead-on, yet she matches every bitter nerve with sweet instances of hope. Terrific." - Wendy McClure, author of I'm Not the New Me
"Funny and strangely soothing. . . . Attenberg has manufactured a very hilarious but painfully real world--a mix of hopeful bright moments and daily drone. She knows that our epiphanies happen in lame restaurants, in front of a platter of Macho Nachos." - Mike Albo, author of The Underminer and Hornito
