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A Novel
by Rachel Calnek-Sugin
For fans of Beautyland and Everything Everywhere All At Once, a captivating, kaleidoscopic debut novel about the life of a precocious girl trying to figure out who―or what―she is.
One afternoon, on a visit to the Bronx Zoo, a jaguar tells six-year-old Grace Goldberg-Li she isn't human. Not that this comes as a total surprise. Her life looks normal, but no one else, not even her beloved sister, seems to be experiencing things as brightly and painfully as she does. As she approaches adolescence, Grace begins to think that she might be an alien. Maybe this would explain the urge to steal every beautiful object she can find, or the peculiar voice that's started issuing apocalyptic warnings inside her head.
In adulthood, Grace still can't figure it out. Is it the world that's crazy and falling apart? Or is it her? She will attempt, over and over, to remake herself and find her place in it. She will fall recklessly in love with a gorgeous doctoral student; she will live as a tree in a backyard during the pandemic; she will become the best employee that Wendy's has ever seen; she will travel to the ends of the earth and keep going.
Moving, imaginative, and endlessly surprising, Universe of Grace is at once a tender family portrait, a queer love story, and an epic quest for self-discovery in a world that's uncertain and wondrous in equal measure. Covering the span of a single life and everything it touches, Universe of Grace shows us that we are each more interconnected and vast than we can ever know.
‟Universe of Grace is a big-hearted celebration of the things that tether us to one another (sisterhood, the secret language of a relationship, music, dance, stories!) and a love letter to humanity and the natural world. Grace is a singular character, at once curious, earnest, and wonderfully weird: You'll want to protect her, cheer her on, and also thank her for letting you into the stranger corners of the mind. Reading this novel feels like an encouragement to be your truest self; it is a hand offered if you need it, a buoy in the stormy sea. In tumultuous times, this is a beautiful, life-affirming reminder of what endures."―Katie Yee, author of Maggie; Or, A Man and A Woman Walk Into a Bar
‟Universe of Grace is a beautifully endearing coming-of-age novel that does not shy away from difficulties like family, our society, or our planet. Instead, it embraces them all with a layer of hope and love that will leave readers with an emphatic wonder―for both the world we live in and the selves we choose to be."―Allison King, author of The Phoenix Pencil Company
This information about Universe of Grace 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.
Born and raised in New York City, Rachel Calnek-Sugin is a writer, social worker, and educator committed to our individual and collective liberation through art-making, community building, and personal transformation. She loves trees, dancing down the streets of Brooklyn, and cooking extravagant meals for her loved ones. She works as a therapist in New York City's public schools and writes fiction, nonfiction, plays, and the occasional subway-poem. Universe of Grace is her first novel.
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