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A searing and strikingly intimate debut set in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, about a newly married lesbian couple who move into a flipped foreclosure, unaware that the former homeowners are still living in the attic.
Months after the housing bubble bursts, newlywed Chicagoans Emma and Rachel move into a charming little house in a conservative Indiana college town, hoping for a fresh start after a painful miscarriage. As Rachel immerses herself in her new role as a tenure-track professor and bestselling novelist, adjunct Emma struggles in the shadow of her wife's success. Desperate to build something of her own, Emma secretly pursues IVF, even as Rachel insists they wait to have children. The house, initially a symbol of new beginnings, becomes a refuge for Emma from the town she's convinced is set against her—until strange occurrences make her question whether she and her wife are truly alone.
They aren't.
Charlotte and Dirk, the former homeowners, are secretly living in the attic above Emma and Rachel's attached garage. Dispossessed by the recession and anxious about her husband's declining health, Charlotte listens to the interlopers below, and her resentment steadily grows. What starts as small acts of defiance—missing food, flipped breakers in the fuse box, subtle scratches in the furniture—soon becomes sabotage. But when her campaign to drive out the couple goes too far, Charlotte's and Emma's stories converge in an explosive climax that will reveal the lengths people will go to reclaim what they've lost.
"Uptmor's ambitious first novel renders the dangers of divisiveness, rigidity, and lack of communication through the experience of two married couples who could not be less alike…Moments of high comedy and real pathos ensue...Using upbeat escapism, Uptmor confounds expectations to expose the darker realities of American life." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"The heart of this book is about marriage: what it is, what it has been, and what it can be….Uptmor skillfully weaves Charlotte and Emma's perspectives to both mirror and conflict with each other. [I] Recommend this debut to anyone interested in the micro-interactions that can make or break a relationship." —Booklist (starred review)
"Uptmor moves through examinations of privilege and identity, extraction and gentrification, politics and parenthood, holding it all with a delicate sense of emotion….With a sharp sense of humor and wry insights into the many ways the myth of the American Dream leaves victims in its wake. The New People is a carefully crafted story of what makes a house a home: the people that share it, to be sure, but also the community built (or not) around it and the many marks left, both good and bad, on the spaces inhabited." —Shelf Awareness (starred review)
"Andrea Uptmor's The New People is a delicate exploration of humanity in all its forms, touching on infertility, addiction, grief, and love with real awareness and pathos." ―Loretta Rothschild, bestselling author of Finding Grace
"This is a book of wonders…With its suspenseful story, the novel tells us about people who live in hiding, and how we live or try to live now, visibly or invisibly. Its characters and their secrets will stay with you long after you turn the last page." ―Charles Baxter, author of Blood Test
This information about The New People 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.
Andrea Uptmor received her MFA in fiction at the University of Minnesota, and her short fiction has been published in McSweeney's, PANK, and The Masters Review, among others. She lives in the Chicago area with her family.
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