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From the author of Confessions of the Fox comes a novel in which a yenta on her deathbed begins to look back at all her failures—including her child.
In a cluttered rent-controlled apartment in the middle of Manhattan, Barbara Rosenberg—old world yenta, committed homophobe, accomplished jazzercizer—is terminally ill, high on opioids, and writing the story of her life. Forget about her late husband, her career as the receptionist for an Upper East Side plastic surgeon, and her failed aspirations to be an actress. What she really wants to talk about are her unhinged thoughts on gender, Karl Marx, Jewish diaspora, and her two great disappointing loves: an estranged trans son and a long lost best friend whose betrayal haunts Barbara still. As she descends further into delirium and illness, Barbara's theories get wilder, and her circumstances put her on a crash course with these intimates once again.
Part novel, part someone's mother's unauthorized memoir, this novel is a timely exploration of sexuality, intergenerational conflict, and who gets to have an intellectual life.
"Readers familiar with any intergenerational family friction will find catharsis here. And that's the gift of Rosenberg, the author: funny, readable prose inviting everyone into the thrill of relatable satire." —Booklist (starred review)
"Night Night Fawn is comic fiction as political firepower ... Rosenberg's novel is a bright streetlight illuminating one strip of a dark street: The dangers are still nearby, but it's a place to stand and laugh loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear." —BookPage (starred review)
"Incendiary ... Rosenberg crafts his satirical portrayal of Barbara's transphobia with a dizzying blend of broad humor and vitriol ... her voice is consistently arresting, and a shocking final twist will cause readers to reexamine everything that came before. It's a memorable familial reckoning." —Publishers Weekly
"This nonlinear narrative is part rant, part rave, part extended Jewish joke, part queer, Marxist fever dream." —Kirkus Reviews
"Jordy Rosenberg's exuberant, exasperating narrator unleashes the full, hilarious, and ultimately revealing power of the rant. Night Night Fawn is a hugely enjoyable novel, devious and rich in irony." —Sofia Samatar, British Fantasy Award-winning author of The White Mosque
"A novel as wickedly funny as it is smart. I have simply never read anything like it—exactly the queer, marxist, yenta-narrated tour de force that we need right now, an instant classic." —Melissa Febos, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Body Work
This information about Night Night Fawn 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.
photo: Stephen Dillon
Jordy Rosenberg is the author of the novel Confessions of the Fox, a New York Times Editors Choice selection, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, a Publishing Triangle Award, the UK Historical Writers Association Debut Crown Award, longlisted for The Dublin Literary Award, and named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, Kirkus Reviews and others. Jordy's work has been supported by MacDowell, The Lannan Foundation, The Banff Centre, and The Ahmanson-Getty Foundation. He is a professor in the Department of English and Associated MFA Faculty in the Program for Poets and Writers at UMass-Amherst.
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