Living Room by Rachel Sherman
As Tolstoy said, “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” so do novels of familial discontent ever get old? Maybe, but not in Rachel Sherman’s debut novel, Living Room. Living Room tells the story of Abby, a teen trying to fit in with the dangerous in-crowd, and her mother and grandmother, who both have extensive problems of their own. While the subject matter isn’t new, critics note Sherman’s unique voice and her tendency to magnify the grotesque in people (with mixed literary results). The subject matter is certainly dark, and The Los Angeles Times goes so far as to say the point of the novel “seems to be, in part, to display the myriad ways in which we exist in a sort of ongoing psychic pain, endlessly inflicting emotional violence on those we ostensibly love best.” Cheery, right? It might not be the best thing to read before spending the holidays with your family, but with comparisons to A.M. Homes and Mary Gaitskill, Rachel Sherman is an author to watch.
“[Sherman's] cold-eyed approach to her material and brisk, hard-boiled style neatly distracts the reader from the familiarity of the novel’s plot.” – Joanna Smith Rakoff, The Los Angeles Times
“Unsentimental yet deeply felt, this tale examines what bubbles under the surface of a supposedly happy Long Island family.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The entertaining plot hums along, its heavier moments tempered with plenty of dark humor and incisive language; but it’s the intimate character sketches that truly resonate.” – Carolyn Juris, Time Out New York
“Despite moments of brilliance, Living Room remains in the shadow of Sherman’s short stories, exploring the same situations, the same configurations of loss and desire.” – Steven Tagle, The Rumpus
*************
Want to know more about us? Check out “What is Books & Authors and Why Should You Care?
