Autobiography of Us - Softcover

Beth; Aria Sloss

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1250044057 ISBN 13: 9781250044051

Publisher: Picador, 2014

Synopsis

Autobiography of Us tells the story of Rebecca Madden and her reckless friend Alex Carrington - two women who, against a backdrop of white gloves and tinkling cocktail glasses in 1960s Pasadena, become fast friends and confidants. Over the years, as both girls' dreams change shape both struggle to define themselves against their mothers' expectations and against a nation on the verge of sweeping cultural change. One summer night, an act of betrayal will forever shake their friendship and define the course of their lives. Decades later, Rebecca looks back on her relationship with Alex, revealing the truths of that night and the years that follow, her life still irrevocably braided into another's. A bittersweet story of a decades-long bond, Sloss' debut is also a powerful portrait of love, loss, and two friends caught between repression and revolution.

About this title

Review:

[A] gorgeous first novel...Raw and vital, Autobiography of Us leaves us marveling at the strange, beautiful architecture of redemption.--Maggie Shipstead, author of Seating Arrangements Engaging...Explores the loves, losses, and shifting friendship of two privileged Southern California girls.--People Delicate, bittersweet.--USAToday.com Powerful...Both moving and engrossing.--Parade. Plays out [two] friends' complicated dynamic against a tableau of enormous changes for women...[Autobiography of Us] blossoms in stirring and surprising ways.--The New York Times [A] sharply imagined debut...Sloss writes with assured grace, capturing the conflicted sensibilities of a generation of women.--O, The Oprah Magazine. An homage to friendship.--Marie Claire Every female friendship has a script of its own. The one playing out in this debut novel is a gripping hybrid--Beaches crossed with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.--More Magazine. A fiercely intelligent and captivating debut and an intimate portrait of female friendship, Autobiography of Us illuminates the challenges faced by an entire generation of American women.--Jennifer Vanderbes, author of Easter Island and Strangers at the Feast. A smooth first-person narrative...The story's hopeful end is tempered with the realization that, had the central characters been born a generation later, maybe their lives would have been better.--Publishers Weekly. Captivating, engrossing, surprising...Sloss' debut novel sweeps across the tumultuous events of the late 1950s through the 1980s and...celebrates the terrible struggle to find one's identity as it elegiacally rues the necessary losses.--Kirkus. At its heart, the novel is a tragic elegy to spirited women in decades past who were forced to silence their dreams and desires, and whose lives were not what they might otherwise have been. Shelf Awareness --Various

Book Description:

A story of young girls growing up in sixties California

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1250044057
• ISBN 13: 9781250044051
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304