Critics' Opinion:
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Published Apr 2022
400 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A transporting novel that follows a year of seismic romantic, political, and familial shifts for a teacher and her students at a boarding school for the deaf, from the acclaimed author of Girl at War.
True biz (adj./exclamation; American Sign Language): really, seriously, definitely, real-talk
True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history finals, and have politicians, doctors, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they'll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who's never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school's golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the headmistress, who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both. As a series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin, and February find their lives inextricable from one another—and changed forever.
This is a story of sign language and lip-reading, disability and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy. Absorbing and assured, idiosyncratic and relatable, this is an unforgettable journey into the Deaf community and a universal celebration of human connection.
"Nović returns with an electrifying narrative set at a present-day boarding school for Deaf high school students, where they find love and friendship and battle a series of injustices...With complex characters seething with rage against the injustices they face, and an immersive and novel treatment of Charlie's experience learning ASL, Nović offers an unforgettable homage to resilience. This is brilliant." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[A] touching and witty celebration of Deaf culture...moving and revelatory." - Booklist (starred review)
"The first half progresses at a very slow pace, and it's heavy on exposition. Things start moving in the second half, and there's a lot of action toward the end. The lessons in ASL and Deaf history interspersed throughout the text may keep the reader's interest more than the story alone would. A coming-of-age story that explores the complexities of community and the ways in which language defines us." - Kirkus Reviews
"Part tender coming-of-age story, part electrifying tale of political awakening, part heartfelt love letter to Deaf culture, True Biz is wholly a wonder. Sara Nović examines the ways language can include, exclude, or help forge an identity—as well as what it means to carve out a place for yourself in a world that sees you as other." - Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere
"Rollicking, immersive, and boldly, exquisitely felt, True Biz delves into the deepest questions about community, communication, and collective action, inviting the reader into a world of language made new." - Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun
"Reading True Biz was a transformative experience—it's as important a book as I've read in years. I was in awe of the care and love and hard-won wisdom that went into the writing of it. Sara Novic is the real deal." - Jami Attenberg, author of All This Could Be Yours
This information about True Biz was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sara Novic was born in 1987 and has lived in the United States and Croatia. She is a graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University, where she studied fiction and translation. She is the fiction editor at Blunderbuss Magazine and teaches writing at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Columbia University. She lives in Queens, New York.
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