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Bestselling young adult author Mary H.K. Choi debuts a brilliantly observed adult novel about mothers, daughters and the complexity of family set against the backdrop of Hollywood.
Stevie cannot escape her mother. Abandoning college plans to work a dead-end job, her days are a purgatorial bore. Many dream of moving to L.A. and into the spotlight, but Stevie can't wait to move away from it, and her mother's orbit, to start over.
Moon is many things: an out-of-work actress, a recovering addict, whatever a mistress becomes when she's widowed, and a mother. Reeling in the aftermath of her lover and TV husband's death, Moon struggles to process her grief. And the last thing she expects is for Stevie to leave her too.
Now, neither Stevie nor Moon can afford to quit each other. And their cost of living forces them into a glass-walled pool house in the backyard, while their home is rented out to pay the bills. But when Adam, Moon's former TV son and Stevie's forever crush, arrives for the funeral, the three are pulled into a messy orbit, moving back into the 'Big House' and play-acting a picture-perfect family even as tensions rise and relationships unravel.
Pool House is a course charted through the wilderness of motherhood, a story about the challenges of navigating class, fame, burgeoning sexuality, and grief as two women grapple with what it means to grow up and grow older in Hollywood.
"Choi's characterizations are astonishing in their nuance—all is childlike performance in this world where no one is sure who they are, but by the end, the injuries are shocking and real.
An impressive portrait of an ephemeral and savage world." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[T]he characters' wit shines in their interactions...This gimlet-eyed family drama has plenty of bite." —Publishers Weekly
"Culturally incisive and relentlessly smart, Pool House is like Grey Gardens set against the tarnished glitz of the Hollywood C-list. It's time we recognize Mary H.K. Choi as an auteur." ―Michelle Zauner, New York Times bestselling author of Crying in H Mart
"Pool House is a sharp, hilarious, unsparing mother-daughter story. Mary H.K. Choi speaks everything that normally goes unspoken, treating wealth, celebrity, even grief with the merciless yet affectionate point-of-view of a family member―ruthlessly ribbing one moment, and shattering your heart in the next. This book, like its author, is something very special." ―Rachel Khong, New York Times bestselling author of Real Americans
This information about Pool House 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.
Photograph (c) Aaron Richter
Mary H.K. Choi is a writer for the New York Times, GQ, Wired, and the Atlantic. She has written comics for Marvel and DC, as well as a collection of essays called Oh, Never Mind. Her novels Emergency Contact and Permanent Record were New York Times bestsellers. She is the host of Hey, Cool Job!, a podcast about jobs, and Hey, Cool Life!, a podcast about mental health and creativity. Mary grew up in Hong Kong and Texas and now lives in New York.
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