{"product_id":"9781250044051","title":"Autobiography of Us : A Novel","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eAutobiography of Us\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor(s): Aria Beth Sloss\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eTWO LIVES. ONE STORY. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eComing of age in the patrician neighborhood of Pasadena, California, during the 1960s, Rebecca Madden and her beautiful, reckless friend Alex dream of lives beyond white gloves and cocktail parties, beyond their mothers' narrow expectations. As change sweeps the nation—civil rights, Vietnam, women's liberation—the two girls' determination to chart a different course brings them closer, until one sweltering evening the summer before their last year of college, when a single act of betrayal changes everything. Decades later, Rebecca's haunting meditation on the past reveals the truth about that night, the years that followed, and the friendship that shaped her. A confession of hopes long forgotten, Aria Beth Sloss' \u003ci\u003eAutobiography of Us\u003c\/i\u003e is an achingly beautiful portrait of a decades-long bond and the victories, sacrifices, and defeats of a generation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReview(s):\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[A] gorgeous first novel...Raw and vital, \u003ci\u003eAutobiography of Us\u003c\/i\u003e leaves us marveling at the strange, beautiful architecture of redemption.” —\u003ci\u003eMaggie Shipstead, author of Seating Arrangements\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Engaging...Explores the loves, losses, and shifting friendship of two privileged Southern California girls.” —\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Delicate, bittersweet.” —\u003ci\u003eUSAToday.com\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Powerful...Both moving and engrossing.” —\u003ci\u003eParade\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Plays out [two] friends' complicated dynamic against a tableau of enormous changes for women...[\u003ci\u003eAutobiography of Us\u003c\/i\u003e] blossoms in stirring and surprising ways.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[A] sharply imagined debut...Sloss writes with assured grace, capturing the conflicted sensibilities of a generation of women.” —\u003ci\u003eO, The Oprah Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“An homage to friendship.” —\u003ci\u003eMarie Claire\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Every female friendship has a script of its own. The one playing out in this debut novel is a gripping hybrid--\u003ci\u003eBeaches\u003c\/i\u003e crossed with \u003ci\u003eWho's Afraid of Virginia Woolf\u003c\/i\u003e.” —\u003ci\u003eMore Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A fiercely intelligent and captivating debut and an intimate portrait of female friendship, \u003ci\u003eAutobiography of Us\u003c\/i\u003e illuminates the challenges faced by an entire generation of American women.” —\u003ci\u003eJennifer Vanderbes, author of Easter Island and Strangers at the Feast\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“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.” —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“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.” —\u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“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.” —\u003ci\u003eShelf Awareness\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“In \u003ci\u003eAutobiography of Us\u003c\/i\u003e, Sloss captures not only the lives of two passionate and intelligent women but that very particular moment in American history when expectations about women and families were beginning to change--I felt Alex and Rebecca's pains and pleasures as my own. A beautifully written and utterly captivating novel.” —\u003ci\u003eMargot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A masterly portrait of the lives of two indelible characters, one 'good' girl, one 'bad,' Aria Beth Sloss's fiercely imagined \u003ci\u003eAutobiography of Us\u003c\/i\u003e is a wrenching, provocative story of thwarted friendship, ambition, and love. It marks a stunning debut from a bold new talent.” —\u003ci\u003eKate Walbert, author of A Short History of Women and Our Kind\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“In Aria Beth Sloss's marvelous debut novel, the passage of time brings love and pain and friendship, then reverses them all--a brilliant chronicle of women's lives in America.” —\u003ci\u003eAndrew Sean Greer, author of The Story of a Marriage and The Confessions of Max Tivoli\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A heartrending novel of two girls, the women they become, and the bond they forge that endures into the next generation. Aria Beth Sloss has written a lyrical and deeply moving love letter to the power of friendship.” —\u003ci\u003eEllen Feldman, author of Lucy and Next to Love\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eISBN:  9781250044051\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Picador","offers":[{"title":"Paperback \/ softback","offer_id":40623889842382,"sku":"9781250044051","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0600\/7029\/7806\/products\/getimage_a0e3f4b9-c754-45ed-b583-2ff8d9d26d58.jpg?v=1638580051","url":"https:\/\/pickwickbookshop.com\/products\/9781250044051","provider":"Pickwick Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}