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“The great accomplishment in You Are One
of Them is how effortlessly the vast and global mixes with—and
informs—the deeply felt story of a lost friendship. Elliott Holt is graceful,
sharp, and supersmart, and her novel is a bildungsroman for the atomic age.”
— Lauren Groff, New York Times bestselling author
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“You Are One of Them journeys
through the US and Russia, perfectly capturing that frightening time in the
1980s when every child went to bed dreaming of mushroom clouds. Like the cold
war, this remarkable novel revolves around hidden truths and unreliable
friendships. Elliott Holt skillfully draws out her characters’ secrets,
exploring the different ways we open and close our hearts and delivering a
well-wrought tale of international and emotional intrigue.”
— Hannah Tinti, New York Times bestselling author
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“Elliott Holt has done something utterly
amazing. Through the experiences of Sarah Zuckerman, the fantastic and
complicated narrator of You Are One of Them, Holt shows us a
genuine and heartfelt coming of age story that so convincingly reveals the
deceptions and half truths of growing up. I have rarely seen such a
thought-provoking and engrossing portrayal of how our experiences shape us and,
consequently, those we most love. This is an eloquent, startling novel, and
Elliott Holt is a fearless writer.”
— Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author
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“Holt’s descriptions of Moscow in the mid-1990s are
fascinating, slyly funny, and full of melancholy details…You Are One of Them is a hugely absorbing first novel from a writer
with a fluid, vivid style and a rare knack for balancing the pleasure of
entertainment with the deeper gratification of insight. More, please.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“Holt evokes post–Cold War Moscow as capably as
she renders Washington, summoning piquant details—the rusting infrastructure
swathed in grime and cigarette smoke; the streets thronged with track-suited
men, scolding old ladies, supermodels, prostitutes, expats—and the vigorous
mood of a culture striving for reinvention…Holt has found inventive ways to use
language that suggests the porousness of identity, the correspondence between
self and other, neighbor and foreigner, you and them. Her ingenuity brings distinction to this
confident, crafty first novel.”
— Washington Post
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“Telling details of Soviet oppression and Russia’s budding advertising industry paint a vivid portrait of a country testing the waters of democracy. Holt, who won a Pushcart Prize for her short fiction, writes with a pleasing, wry intelligence in this promising debut.”
— Publishers Weekly
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“Holt, once a copywriter and now an award-winning fiction author, evokes with perfect clarity the sparkling tones of friendship and the hollow clangs of betrayal. Holt’s Cold War plot and setting make a fertile medium for growing the suspicion that loyalty is but love’s plaything. This debut novel delivers a satisfying and mature narrative for all readers and may have a special resonance for young adults.”
— Library Journal
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“Holt perfectly melds the personal and the political in this spot-on portrait of a girlhood friendship set against a Cold War backdrop…Holt ably captures both the paranoia of the Cold War and the shabby yet genteel aura of an exhausted Moscow just after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. But it is her razor-sharp insights into the turbulent dynamics of female friendship that give this novel its heft.”
— Booklist
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“Elliott Holt is not just a promising writer but
a great writer. She’s young, and she’s a master. I was going to write that You
Are One of Them could’ve been written by an Alice Munro or a Susan
Minot, but that would be wrong. Because this book could only have been written
by Elliott Holt, whose powerful new voice is her own.”
— Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life and Chang and Eng