"A work of supreme control and complicated emotional subterfuge, YOU DON'T HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS is the breakout novel for one of Amerca's great young fiction writers. A book that uses the framework of our present reality to build it's own world, it blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction in the best way, and asks urgent, unforgettable questions about the future of our once great American cities, the state of American race relations, and the widening gap between rich and poor"--