Lynn Steger Strong - Böcker

'Suspenseful, dazzling and moving' Rumaan Alam'Arresting and powerful' Lily King'Breathtakingly propulsive and insightful' Leslie JamisonIt’s 22 December and siblings Henry, Kate and Martin have converged with their spouses on Henry’s house in upstate New York. This is their first Christmas since their mother passed. Without her once ever-present advice and gentle nudges to connect with each other when they need it most, they’ve grown distant. Over the course of the next three days, old resentments and instabilities arise as the siblings, with a gaggle of children afoot, attempt to perform familiar rituals while also trying to decide what to do with their sole inheritance, their mother’s house.As each tries and fails and tries again to figure out how to reconcile their various needs and impulses around the house, they must also see whether they can and will remain a family without their matriarch. They are all feeling the strain but when a local child goes missing they are forced to come together, and all of them will cross a line.  Praise for Lynn Steger Strong‘Furious, aching and razor sharp’ Emma Cline‘A deeply intelligent and sneakily moving novel about having the ground fall away beneath your feet. Strong ingeniously undercuts conventional wisdom about what it means to be a success in this world’ Jenny Offill‘A defining novel of our age of left-behind families... as if Anne Helen Peterson's viral burnout article and John Steinbeck's oeuvre had a baby’ Vulture‘Elizabeth's anxious, raw voice ties these threads together, coalescing into a story about the price women pay for craving what's just out of reach’ Time magazine‘Through Elizabeth's experiences and in her propulsive voice, the novel explores race, class, privilege, coincidence, family, friendship and love’ Guardian‘A smart, sharp novel’ Elle‘Strong strips away at the imbalance of advantages that ultimately injure us all and the collisions that never cease. Yet, in this stunning novel, she never loses sight of the irrepressible desire to love, connect and forgive one another’ Observer

'Suspenseful, dazzling and moving' Rumaan Alam'Arresting and powerful' Lily King'Breathtakingly propulsive and insightful' Leslie JamisonIt’s 22 December and Henry, Kate and Martin are gathering with their partners and children at Henry and Alice’s house in upstate New York. It's the first Christmas since their mother passed and without her ever-present advice and gentle nudges to connect with each other when they need it most, the siblings have grown distant.Their differences are all too apparent, from the lives they have forged for themselves to what they each want to do with their sole inheritance: their mother’s house. As they try and fail and try again to create new picture-perfect memories, tensions and old resentments rise, but they are forced to unite when a local family calls for help.Compassionate and wise, Flight explores the meaning of family and home, and the gift of being together.Praise for Lynn Steger Strong‘Furious, aching and razor sharp’ Emma Cline‘A deeply intelligent and sneakily moving novel about having the ground fall away beneath your feet. Strong ingeniously undercuts conventional wisdom about what it means to be a success in this world’ Jenny Offill‘A defining novel of our age of left-behind families... as if Anne Helen Peterson's viral burnout article and John Steinbeck's oeuvre had a baby’ Vulture‘Elizabeth's anxious, raw voice ties these threads together, coalescing into a story about the price women pay for craving what's just out of reach’ Time magazine‘Through Elizabeth's experiences and in her propulsive voice, the novel explores race, class, privilege, coincidence, family, friendship and love’ Guardian‘A smart, sharp novel’ Elle‘Strong strips away at the imbalance of advantages that ultimately injure us all and the collisions that never cease. Yet, in this stunning novel, she never loses sight of the irrepressible desire to love, connect and forgive one another’ Observer

Maya Taylor, an intense, gifted English professor, has a tendency to retreat when she is needed most, escaping on long morning runs or finding comfort in the well-thumbed novels in her library. But when she sends her daughter Ellie to Florida to care for a friend’s child, it’s with the best of intentions. Twenty and spiraling, Ellie is lost in a fog of drugs and men—desperately in need of a fresh start. Her life with this attractive new family in Florida begins well, but Ellie is crippled by the fear that she’ll only disappoint those around her . . . again. And in the sprawling hours of one humid afternoon, she finally makes a mistake she cannot take back.The accident hangs over both mother and daughter as they try to repair their fractured relationship and find a way to transcend not only their differences but also their more startling similarities. In Maya’s and Ellie’s echoing narratives, Lynn Steger Strong creates a searing, unforgettable portrait of familial love and the tender heartache of motherhood—from the sweltering Florida heat to the bone-cold of New York in January. Churning toward one fateful day in two separate timelines, Hold Still is a story of before and after and the impossible distance in between.Heralding the arrival of a profoundly moving new talent, this novel marks a taut and propulsive debut that “builds to a perfect crescendo, an ending that is both surprising and true” (Marcy Dermansky). Hold Still explores the weight of culpability and the depths and limits of a mother’s love.“Hold Still is an unblinking examination of family, the mother-child bond, and the storms it must withstand. Lynn Strong pulls no punches in considering not just how deep, but also how misguided a mother’s love can be.”—Elisa Albert, author of After Birth