✨COVER ANNOUCEMENT ✨ We’re so excited to share the cover of @rosesmithwrites ’ forthcoming novel THE SHARED LIFE OF EGAN AND LUCIAN, designed by @nlcaputo !
This one will hit bookstores on 11/3 and is available to preorder now 📚
About the book:
Love conquers all. But which kind of love? The love of a passionate partner? The love of one sibling for another? The love of a parent for their child, or the love of an artist toward their art? And what about the love one feels toward home, a landscape one always wishes to return to?
Rose Smith’s debut novel feels like an instant classic in its examination of the many kinds of love within the McCauley family, who live on Shep’s Island off the coast of Maine. Sheila and Ian have raised their twin boys here; Egan wants to be a professional athlete, Lucian an artist, following in the footsteps of his complicated and distant mother. On a trip abroad, Lucian meets Lea, who accompanies him to idyllic Shep’s Island. When a family secret comes to light, Lea flees back to the mainland—but with a different man: Lucian’s twin, Egan. Their connection is immediate and undeniable.
The years will pass with Lea caught between the two brothers. Even when she decides to begin a life on Shep’s Island with Egan, fate will continue to bring these three into one another’s orbit, all circling around the family unit. The island, with its shifting shoreline and harsh beauty, mirrors the inner lives of Smith’s characters. Ultimately, it is the heart of the family unit that perseveres—a magic and a bond that supersedes all that has come before.
#bookstagram #coverreveal #bookclub #booksbooksbooks #bookrecs
My first novel friends! I’m excited to share The Shared Life of Egan and Lucian with all of you.
Deeply grateful to @hochmangail , @roniasinrice and @dansmetanka
I’m thrilled that the McCauleys of Shep’s Island have found such a good home. Can’t wait for you to read.
New essay & interview with @marisasilver in @craftliterary
Marisa and I got into process, structure, and balancing craft with our unconscious impulses. Plus bafflement and unruliness in fiction!
Thank you to the rigorous and thoughtful team at CRAFT Literary.
Link in my bio.
I have a few spots left in my MIDDLEMARCH reading group benefiting @austinbatcave . This is one of my all-time favorite books; it changes and deepens my understanding of myself and the world every time I read it.
We’ll do a close reading of the novel, over five sessions, with a determined focus on the role of sympathy in the narration. In the words of Zadie Smith, “the novel is a riot of subjectivity… Middlemarch is a book about the effects of experience that changes with experience. It gets better as you age.” Whether this is your first time reading Middlemarch, or your tenth, think of this as a lively book club for readers of all levels, and for readers who are also writers.
Five sessions, Tuesday evenings. 7 - 8:30pm. April 8 - May 6. @firstlightbooks
To Register:
/product/in-person-reading-discussion-group-middlemarch/
Here’s something I am curious about: when is a well-placed flourish, maybe even a flurry of adjectives and adverbs, perfect for a story, and when are the simplest of sentences called for?
I wrote about Kevin Barry’s “The Pub with No Beer” and Raymond Carver’s “Where I’m Calling From” for @craftliterary . It was an absolute pleasure to work with the CRAFT team. They were thoughtful and rigorous in their editing and it is a better essay for it. Thank you to Editor in Chief
@courtneyharler
Link to the full essay in my bio.
I’ll be leading a reading and discussion group on one of my favorite novels of all time - Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece To the Lighthouse. Register at austinbatcave.org
New story in @five_points_journal right now.
So thrilled to have this one out in the world… Thanks to Peter Orner for helping me get it across the finish line.
This little beauty…
“She felt very young; and at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”
Oh- the semicolons! Swoon.
I absolutely loved this new novel by my friend @skirkwalsh coming out from @counterpointpress in spring 2021. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful... a portrait - vividly rendered - of persistence and love, life really, set against the devastation of the Belfast Blitz.
“An island can be dreadful for someone from outside. Everything is complete, and everyone has his obstinate, sure, and self-sufficient place. Within their shores, everything functions according to rituals that are hard as rock from repetition, and at the same time they amble through their days as whimsically and casually as if the world ended at the horizon.”
