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Immediate Family Audiobook
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Publisher Description
A tender and fierce debut novel that explores the bond between two siblings—one the biological child and one adopted from an orphanage in Thailand
It is the day of her brother’s wedding and our narrator is still struggling with her wedding toast. Despite a recent fracture between them, Danny has asked her to give a speech, and she doesn’t know where to begin, how to put words to their kind of love. She was nine years old when she traveled with her parents to Thailand to meet her brother, age three. They grew up together like any other siblings, and shared a bucolic childhood in Northern California. Yet when she holds their story up to the light, it refracts in ways she doesn’t expect.
What follows is a heartfelt letter addressed to Danny and an attempt at a full accounting of their years growing up, invoking everything from the classic Victorian adoption plot to childless women in literature to documents from Danny’s case file. It’s also a confession of sorts to the parts of her life that she has kept from him, including her own struggle with infertility. And as the hours until the wedding wane, she uncovers the words that can’t and won’t be said aloud.
In Immediate Family, Ashley Nelson Levy explores the enduring bond between two siblings and the complexities of motherhood, infertility, race, and the many definitions of family.
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“Immediate Family is about the improbable relentlessness of love. It refuses tidy conclusions, and yet by the time I turned the last page, this book that had undone me had also left me magnificently whole.”
— Anthony Marra, New York Times bestselling author
Quotes
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“Honestly explore[s] the complexities of adoption in modern America.”
— Anthony Marra, New York Times bestselling author -
“Feels almost memoir-like in its realness.”
— Entertainment Weekly -
“[A] provocative snapshot of a family and the complicated, imperfect love that binds one member of it to another.”
— Goop -
“A beautifully raw ode to the bond between siblings.”
— PopSugar -
“Powerful vignettes…blend with musings about the history of transracial adoption, Victorian literature, and famous adoptees.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“Levy captures elusive ideas and intense emotions about transracial adoption and infertility.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“[An] unsparing and absorbing family portrait.”
— Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin -
“Probes the fissures and hidden places of familial love…and in so doing gets to the heart of love itself.”
— Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State -
“Asks urgent questions about belonging, the definition of family, and the horizons of love.”
— Julie Buntin, author of Marlena
Awards
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A Goop Pick for Gwyneth Paltrow's Book Club
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An Amazon Editor’s Top Pick
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An Entertainment Weekly Pick of Most Anticipated Books of Summer
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A PopSugar Pick of Upcoming Books
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A BookRiot Pick of Most Anticipated Summer Novels
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A Paperback Paris Pick of Most Anticipated Summer Reads
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About Ashley Nelson Levy
Ashley Nelson Levy has published fiction and essays in ZYZZYVA, Catapult, the Atlas Review, and Fourteen Hills. Her work was given a notable mention in The Best Nonrequired Reading and received the Bambi Holmes Award for Emerging Writers. She received her MFA degree from Columbia University, where she was a Clein/Lemann Fellow. In 2015, she cofounded Transit Books, an independent publishing house with a focus on international literature.