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“An impressive psychological drama, Sloss’ first novel aptly brings to the fore the social issues that uniquely challenge her heroine.”
— Booklist
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“Book clubs may find much to discuss regarding women's friendships, social class, and changes in women's options as a result of the feminist movement.”
— Library Journal
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“Some friendships are fated, not chosen. Aria
Beth Sloss’ gorgeous first novel deftly and richly exposes the lasting hope as
well as the inevitable wounds that come from great love. Raw and vital, Autobiography
of Us leaves us marveling at the strange, beautiful architecture of
redemption.”
— Maggie Shipstead, New York Times bestselling author
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“A masterly portrait of the lives of two
indelible characters…Aria Beth Sloss’ fiercely imagined Autobiography of Us is a wrenching, provocative story of thwarted
friendship, ambition, and love. It marks a stunning debut from a bold new
talent.”
— Kate Walbert, New York Times bestselling author
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“With surprising ease, the book plays out the
friends’ complicated dynamic against a tableau of enormous changes for women,
resulting in a potent story of altered expectations and thwarted dreams…A book
that gains momentum with each new choice and crisis…[Autobiography of Us]
blossoms in stirring and surprising ways.”
— New York Times
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“[A] delicate, bittersweet story.”
— USA Today
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“[A] sharply imagined debut…Sloss writes with
assured grace, capturing the conflicted sensibilities of a generation of women.”
— O, The Oprah Magazine
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“Spanning three decades, this engaging novel
explores the loves, losses, and shifting friendship of two privileged Southern
California girls.”
— People
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“Aria Beth Sloss’ powerful novel flashes back to
the ’60s, when young women’s choices seemed limited and female friendships were
fragile life-lines. You’ll find this story both moving and engrossing.”
— Parade
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“Every female friendship has a script of its
own. The one playing out in this debut novel is a gripping hybrid—Beaches crossed
with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”
— More magazine
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“A smooth first-person narrative…The story’s
hopeful end is tempered with the realization that, had the central characters
been born a generation later, maybe their lives would have been better.”
— Publishers Weekly
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“Captivating, engrossing, surprising…Sloss’
debut novel sweeps across the tumultuous events of the late 1950s through the
1980s and…celebrates the terrible struggle to find one’s identity as it
elegiacally rues the necessary losses.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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“At its heart, the novel is a tragic elegy to spirited
women in decades past who were forced to silence their dreams and desires, and
whose lives were not what they might otherwise have been.”
— Shelf Awareness
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“A fiercely intelligent and captivating debut
and an intimate portrait of female friendship, Autobiography of Us illuminates
the challenges faced by an entire generation of American women.”
— Jennifer Vanderbes, author of Easter Island and Strangers at the Feast
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“In Aria Beth Sloss’ marvelous debut novel, the
passage of time brings love and pain and friendship, then reverses them all—a
brilliant chronicle of women’s lives in America.”
— Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Story of a Marriage and The Confessions of Max Tivoli
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“A heartrending novel of two girls, the women
they become, and the bond they forge that endures into the next generation.
Aria Beth Sloss has written a lyrical and deeply moving love letter to the
power of friendship.”
— Ellen Feldman, author of Lucy and Next to Love