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A stylish, unsettling work of psychological suspense about an American woman, adrift in Mexico for a year, whose chance encounter with a glamorous older expat spirals into obsession and betrayal.
There's no one, there's only you.
When Sally, an American living in San Miguel de Allende, meets Louise outside her children's school, she's eager to immerse herself more deeply in the life of the city. In Mexico for just a year with her husband, an architect, Sally is entranced by Louise—her elegance, her harshness, her stories about Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac—and the two quickly become inseparable. Soon enough, Louise has begun calling her Miaand, at first playfully, then in earnest, introducing Sally as her daughter to a growing circle of friends.
By turns enthralled with the possibility of a new identity in Mexico and troubled by Louise's magnetic hold over her, Sally attempts to keep the relationship a secret from her husband. As the specter of Sally's troubled childhood looms, and Louise's self-mythologizing tightens its grip, the two women test the limits of reinvention—until their fictions threaten the security of Sally's flesh-and-blood family.
A taut, beguiling work of psychological suspense, Mia is a mother-daughter story turned on its head and a high-intensity fable about the limitations of playing a role that doesn't belong to you.
"In measured beats, Bazzett explores the dark side of indulging in fantasies, however benign. It amounts to a singular take on the folie à deux that leaves the reader pondering the nature of obsession and the line between fate and free will." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Bazzett's debut is a beautifully written novel of love, loss, and longing. Peppered with vivid descriptions of small-town Mexico, Bazzett's prose is at once gorgeous and harsh, and her characters jump off the page." —Booklist (starred review)
"Leslie Bazzett's Mia is an extraordinary debut novel. Taut, lush, and mysterious, Mia is an exceptionally intelligent psychological thriller in the tradition of Patricia Highsmith. It is also a deft and honest examination of motherhood and marriage. You won't read a better suspense novel this summer." —Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and Godspeed
"In this extraordinary debut novel, Leslie Bazzett invites us to the expatriate community of San Miguel de Allende, then drops us head first into a personal labyrinth in which a mother walks the fine line between good friendship and borderline obsession. Any woman who has sought a bit of reinvention will find Sally and Louise's relationship is as familiar as it is strange. In a voice reminiscent of Deborah Levy and Rachel Cusk, Bazzett has crafted a slow burn that, in the end, fully ignites and surprises. Mia is a great read." —Katie Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Embassy Wife
This information about Mia 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.
Leslie Bazzett's fiction debuted in New England Review and received "Special Mention" in that year's Pushcart Prize Anthology. Subsequent work has appeared in NER, Carolina Quarterly, West Branch, and Louisville Review, among other places. Her most recent story to appear in NER was listed as "Notable" in Best American Short Stories. She has been a finalist for a Rona Jaffe Award and a recipient of the NER Award for Emerging Writers. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, poet Michael Bazzett, and their two children. Mia is her debut novel.
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