Living Room — Rachel Sherman

“[A] riveting debut novel . . . Unsentimental yet deeply felt, this tale examines what bubbles under the surface of a supposedly happy Long Island family” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
 
The follow-up to her highly praised debut story collection, The First Hurt, Rachel Sherman's Living Room is a beautiful and disarmingly direct portrait of a family in trouble. With the tone of a modern-day Jewish The Ice Storm set in Long Island, imbued with Alice Munro's fascination with personal history, Living Room is a deep exploration of the ripple effects of mental illness on a family, as well as a look at generational differences in mating and marriage, and a wry, wise look at suburban angst.
 
“The fractured lives of three generations of women told with zero sentimentality and a huge amount of heart. Living Room is edgy, moving, smart, funny and altogether human. Rachel Sherman is the real deal.” -- Dani Shapiro, New York Times�"bestselling author of Inheritance
 
“Sherman turns her unflinching, unsentimental eye once again on deepest suburbia, where personal history festers rather than heals. [Living Room] hums along, its heavier moments tempered with plenty of dark humor and incisive language; but it's the intimate character sketches that truly resonate.” -- Time Out (New York)
 
“Often praised for her lack of sentimentality, Sherman doesn't hesitate to capture her characters' weird, unbecoming thoughts . . . Her writing lends itself to the form: her story structures tight as fists, her prose terse and unadorned.” -- The Rumpus