‘Complex, challenging, sensitively and beautifully told. A gorgeous, affecting novel that . . . gets to the heart of love itself.’ Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State
It is the day of her younger brother’s wedding and our narrator is struggling to compose her toast. She was nine years old when she travelled with her parents to Thailand to meet her brother Danny, and while their childhood in California was a happy one, when she holds their story up to the light, it refracts in ways she doesn’t expect. How to put words to their kind of love? What follows is a heartfelt letter addressed to Danny and an exploration of their years growing up and the distance now between them.
In Immediate Family, Ashley Nelson Levy explores the complexities of motherhood, infertility and race, and the many definitions of family. Deeply moving, at times very funny, this is a novel luminous and fierce with love and honesty.
‘I love this book.’ Catherine Lacey, author of Pew
‘Deeply moving.’ Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies
‘This unsparing and absorbing family portrait broke my heart and remade it a hundred times over.’ Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin
‘A unique, gorgeously textured narrative that explores the boundaries of familial love . . . a work of powerful, life-affirming generosity.’ Los Angeles Review of Books
‘A really beautiful book.’ Pragya Agarwal, author of (M)otherhood
‘An emotional and absorbing dissection of a relationship.’ Daily Mail
‘Absorbing … fresh and innovative … A compassionate, charitable story about family ties, blood or otherwise, that will always bind.’ Irish Times