Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2012
304 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Six months after September 11th, New Yorkers are instructed to get on with their lives despite the terror advisories, streets filled with 9/11 merchandise, and mail that may contain Anthrax.
But for Hailey, still jobless after college and living in her family's Fifth Avenue penthouse, getting on with life means getting closer to Michael Brenner, the Princeton graduate and future human rights lawyer who seems to have it all. The city feels as if it's on the brink of apocalypse, and seeking out any sort of future seems pointless. So Hailey and her friends - Katie, already working at Morgan Stanley; Randy, a trust-fund kid who wears sweaters with holes in them; and Jess, confident of her future success regardless of her present inertia - stay out all night, dream up get rich quick schemes and aspire to greatness while questioning how much that greatness really matters.
But when Hailey meets Adrian, a transplanted Pennsylvanian and recent Brown graduate who doesn't belong to Hailey's privileged mileu, she begins to realize that her view of the world might not be the only one there is, and soon she is questioning everything she thought she knew.
Paperback original
"Starred Review. Engrossing... Haimoff's writing resonates with an authenticity and gravitas that books about girls trying to find themselves in the big city often lack. Her details about elite schools and childhood haunts in Manhattan pepper Hailey's memories in often touching ways. A thoughtful novel for our time." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Debut novelist Haimoff clearly captures the strange, sad time in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and yet she also nails the energetic, funny banter of twentysomethings, the expectations placed on the sons and daughters of the supersuccessful, and the heartache of being young and lost." - Booklist
"Whether she's ruthlessly dissecting the mating habits of disaffected urbanites, or evoking the emotional complexity of coming of age in New York City in the aftermath of 9/11, Haimoff's writing is smart, witty, honest, and never anything less than utterly engaging." - Jonathan Tropper, New York Times bestselling author of This is Where I Leave You
"Beware reader: this novel is so addictive, once you start reading, you will have to cancel all of your plans. But you'll hardly even notice; Michelle Haimoff has such a fresh and inviting voice, and a gift for making characters live, you'll feel surrounded by friends." - Alison Espach, author of The Adults
This information about These Days Are Ours 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.
Michelle Haimoff is a writer and blogger whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, psychologytoday.com and The Huffington Post. She is a founding member of NOW's Young Feminist Task Force and blogs about feminist issues at genfem.com. Visit her online at www.michellehaimoff.com.
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