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Published Jul 2013
336 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A couple escaping the over-the-top lifestyle of Manhattan's Upper East Side move to comparably quaint Newport, Rhode Island, only to be confronted by truths they tried to leave behind.
Nate, a midlevel Wall Streeter, and his partner Emily are effectively evicted from New York City when they can no longer afford their cramped apartment on the Upper East Side. An out presents itself when Nate's offered a job in Newport—complete with a bucolic, small-scale, and seemingly affordable new house. They're eager to start fresh, yet within minutes of arriving in Rhode Island, their car and belongings are stolen, and they're left with nothing but the keys to an empty house and a bawling 10-month-old son.
Over the three-day weekend that follows, as Emily and Nate watch their meager pile of cash dwindle and tension increase, the secrets they kept from each other in the city emerge—and threaten to destroy their hope for a future.
A story about economic precariousness, family history, tainted gene pools, art theft, architecture, and the mad grab for the American Dream, The Exiles bravely explores the weights of our pasts—and whether or not it's possible to start over.
"Lynn's latest...is an introspective domestic drama of a family battered by the rising cost of living…Lynn's new novel rings with truth and compassion." - Publishers Weekly
"Lynn's narrative, which depicts the raw emotional impact of deceit and the helplessness of being unable to foretell the future or forestall the inevitable, contains moments that introduce wit and humor to a bleak situation that becomes bleaker by the moment." - Kirkus Reviews
"The Exiles is better about current-day New York — and the promise of the American world outside New York — than just about anything I can remember. If books teach you how to live, read The Exiles to learn how to be a new parent, a spouse, a human being. Just read it." - Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life and More Than It Hurts You
"...A revelation, a suspenseful and indelible journey through fate, love, luck, and what it means to be a family." - Lauren Grodstein, author of A Friend of the Family and The Explanation for Everything
"...a true storyteller, Allison Lynn pulls us deep into the hearts and minds of a young couple caught up in a high-risk tangle of money, morality, and mortality." - Hillary Jordan, author of When She Woke and Mudbound
"Sharp, consoling, hilarious....Her characters are as lovely and embarrassing as our own sweet selves." - Dan Barden, author of The Next Right Thing
"Touching and funny and insightful...a cautionary tale for the post-Lehman, post-Occupy era." - Natalie Danford, author of Inheritance
This information about The Exiles 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.
Allison Lynn is author of Now You See It, which won both the William Faulkner Medal from the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society and the Chapter One Award from the Bronx Writer's Center. She teaches in the Creative Writing program at Butler University.
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