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An exuberant and irreverently funny novel about one gorgeously messy friendship-feud-unrequited-love-affair set in Sydney across eighteen years.
Nell Argall and Eve Bowman are both brilliant, odd, and friendless. When they meet on the brutal battlefield that is their posh all girls' high school during their first year there, both their lives are changed forever. From school, to university, to careers, Nell and Eve's is a relationship that is a life raft that is also a poison apple that is also a Medusan stare, frozen in time.
When the passion, guilt, shame, and joy that perpetually twists and turns between them finally implodes, Nell abruptly walks away, leaving Eve alone at the helm of the gloriously unorthodox family they've built with their seven-year-old daughter, Lake. Eve finds herself left wondering: Can the wounds of adolescent betrayal ever really heal? Can we ever really understand what's going on in someone else's head? And what's love got to do, got to do with it?
Written with Gray's characteristic big-heartedness and dark wit, Chosen Family is a queer modern classic that reminds us again and again that sometimes the most fulfilling and life-saving relationships are the ones that are the hardest to define.
"[P]erceptive...The ending is a bit harried, but Gray captures the quiet tension of a relationship built on devotion and simmering regret. This one hits hard." —Publishers Weekly
"Funny, contemporary and attuned to the subtle negotiations that shape friendships and first loves." —Sydney Morning Herald
"Chosen Family is a dynamo of a novel. Madeleine Gray writes with swagger and wryness, crafting a will-they-won't-they for the ages. This is work that begs us to consider the breadth of friendship, love, and forgiveness. What do we owe each other? What are we willing to sacrifice in order to keep one another safe? Gorgeous, hilarious work. I ate this one up." —Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things
"Funny, profound, and deeply true, Chosen Family is a tender story about love, identity, family, and whether it is possible to combine the three into something entirely new. I turned the pages so fast, it felt like reading a mystery, except the only mystery is the spectacular complexity of the human heart. Wow, what a novel." —Holly Brickley, author of Deep Cuts
This information about Chosen Family 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.
Madeleine Gray is the author of the novel Green Dot. She has written for the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, the BBC, Electric Literature, and Sydney Review of Books, among other publications. She lives in Sydney, Australia.
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