Pretend We Are Lovely: A Novel
(OverDrive MP3 Audiobook, OverDrive Listen)
Description
It’s the summer of 1982 in Blacksburg, Virginia—seven years after the suspicious death of a son and sibling—and the Sobel family is hungry.
Francie dresses in tennis skirts and ankle socks and weighs her grams of allotted carrots and iceberg lettuce. Her semi-estranged husband Tate prefers a packed fridge and hidden doughnuts. Daughters Enid, ten, and Vivvy, almost thirteen, are subtler versions of their parents, measuring their summer vacation by meals had or meals skipped. But at summer’s end, secrets both old and new emerge and Francie disappears, leaving the family teetering on the brink.
Told from alternating points of view by the four living Sobels, Pretend We Are Lovely is a sharp and darkly funny story of forgiveness, family secrets, and the losses we inherit. At its core is the ever-complicated and deeply-devoted bond of sisterhood as the girls, left mostly to their own devices, must navigate their way through middle school, find comfort in each other, and learn the difference between food and nourishment.
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Citations
Noley Reid. (2017). Pretend We Are Lovely: A Novel. Unabridged Books on Tape.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Noley Reid. 2017. Pretend We Are Lovely: A Novel. Books on Tape.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Noley Reid, Pretend We Are Lovely: A Novel. Books on Tape, 2017.
MLA Citation (style guide)Noley Reid. Pretend We Are Lovely: A Novel. Unabridged Books on Tape, 2017.
Copy Details
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- An Oprah Magazine Editors' Pick and Publishers Weekly Best of the Season
It’s the summer of 1982 in Blacksburg, Virginia—seven years after the suspicious death of a son and sibling—and the Sobel family is hungry.
Francie dresses in tennis skirts and ankle socks and weighs her grams of allotted carrots and iceberg lettuce. Her semi-estranged husband Tate prefers a packed fridge and hidden doughnuts. Daughters Enid, ten, and Vivvy, almost thirteen, are subtler versions of their parents, measuring their summer vacation by meals had or meals skipped. But at summer’s end, secrets both old and new emerge and Francie disappears, leaving the family teetering on the brink.
Told from alternating points of view by the four living Sobels, Pretend We Are Lovely is a sharp and darkly funny story of forgiveness, family secrets, and the losses we inherit. At its core is the ever-complicated and deeply-devoted bond of sisterhood as the girls, left mostly to their own devices, must navigate their way through middle school, find comfort in each other, and learn the difference between food and nourishment. - reviews
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May 15, 2017
Reid transforms the story of a mentally ill mother setting off the implosion of a tight-knit nuclear family into a sharp-edged portrait of the ways in which each member of the family is shaped by the others, with no villains, only victims. At the heart of the story, set in a Virginia university town in 1982, is food, with which no one in the Sobel family has an uncomplicated relationship. Housewife mom Francie obsesses over calories and spends her days running in both literal and figurative circles. Philosophy professor dad Tate, off in his own apartment after starting an affair with an undergrad, eats raw refrigerated biscuit dough out of the tube. Ten-year-old Enid takes after him, with food an equal source of comfort and shame, while 12-year-old Vivvy, drawn against her will to the boy next door, models herself on her mother. The fifth member of the family is a “fussy, obstinate, compulsive boy” who died seven years earlier in horrific circumstances. He suffered from an illness, the main manifestation of which was an insatiable appetite, and continues to haunt the Sobels. Told in bright shards of chapters from the points of view of the four survivors, the novel never descends into mere case history. Set mostly during a single summer, it reaches a climax during Halloween, that sugar-laden holiday in which boundaries are often broken. As Francie reaches a breaking point, the girls act out in ways that endanger themselves and others. This is a tense, vivid, and sharp novel that captures the complex relationships between the Sobel family members, particularly between sisters Vivvy and Enid.
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Francie dresses in tennis skirts and ankle socks and weighs her grams of allotted carrots and iceberg lettuce. Her semi-estranged husband Tate prefers a packed fridge and hidden doughnuts. Daughters Enid, ten, and Vivvy, almost thirteen, are subtler versions of their parents, measuring their summer vacation by meals had or meals skipped. But at summer’s end, secrets both old and new emerge and Francie disappears, leaving the family teetering on the brink.
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