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Start giftingAutobiography of Us
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Learn moreA gripping debut novel about friendship, loss, and love—a confession of what passed between two women who met as girls
Coming of age in the patrician neighborhood of Pasadena, California, during the 1960s, Rebecca Madden and her beautiful, reckless friend Alex dream of lives beyond their mothers' narrow expectations. Their struggle to define themselves against the backdrop of an American cultural revolution unites them early on, until one sweltering evening the summer before their last year of college, when a single act of betrayal changes everything. Decades later, Rebecca's haunting meditation on the past reveals the truth about that night, the years that followed, and the friendship that shaped her.
Autobiography of Us is an achingly beautiful portrait of a decades-long bond. A rare and powerful glimpse into the lives of two women caught between repression and revolution, it casts new light on the sacrifices, struggles, victories, and defeats of a generation.
Aria Beth Sloss is a graduate of Yale and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Iowa Arts Foundation, the Yaddo Corporation, and the Vermont Studio Center, and her writing has appeared in Glimmer Train, the Harvard Review, and online at the Paris Review and FiveChapters. She lives in New York City.
Performed by Kathe Mazur, Stefan Rudnicki, Joe Barrett, and Edward Asner
Reviews
“In Aria Beth Sloss’ marvelous debut novel, the passage of time brings love and pain and friendship, then reverses them all—a brilliant chronicle of women’s lives in America.”
“In Autobiography of Us, Sloss captures not only the lives of two passionate and intelligent women but that very particular moment in American history when expectations about women and families were beginning to change—I felt Alex and Rebecca’s pains and pleasures as my own. A beautifully written and utterly captivating novel.”
“An impressive psychological drama, Sloss’ first novel aptly brings to the fore the social issues that uniquely challenge her heroine.”
“Book clubs may find much to discuss regarding women's friendships, social class, and changes in women's options as a result of the feminist movement.”
“Some friendships are fated, not chosen. Aria Beth Sloss’ gorgeous first novel deftly and richly exposes the lasting hope as well as the inevitable wounds that come from great love. Raw and vital, Autobiography of Us leaves us marveling at the strange, beautiful architecture of redemption.”
“A masterly portrait of the lives of two indelible characters…Aria Beth Sloss’ fiercely imagined Autobiography of Us is a wrenching, provocative story of thwarted friendship, ambition, and love. It marks a stunning debut from a bold new talent.”
“With surprising ease, the book plays out the friends’ complicated dynamic against a tableau of enormous changes for women, resulting in a potent story of altered expectations and thwarted dreams…A book that gains momentum with each new choice and crisis…[Autobiography of Us] blossoms in stirring and surprising ways.”
“[A] delicate, bittersweet story.”
“[A] sharply imagined debut…Sloss writes with assured grace, capturing the conflicted sensibilities of a generation of women.”
“Spanning three decades, this engaging novel explores the loves, losses, and shifting friendship of two privileged Southern California girls.”
“Aria Beth Sloss’ powerful novel flashes back to the ’60s, when young women’s choices seemed limited and female friendships were fragile life-lines. You’ll find this story both moving and engrossing.”
“Every female friendship has a script of its own. The one playing out in this debut novel is a gripping hybrid—Beaches crossed with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”
“A smooth first-person narrative…The story’s hopeful end is tempered with the realization that, had the central characters been born a generation later, maybe their lives would have been better.”
“Captivating, engrossing, surprising…Sloss’ debut novel sweeps across the tumultuous events of the late 1950s through the 1980s and…celebrates the terrible struggle to find one’s identity as it elegiacally rues the necessary losses.”
“At its heart, the novel is a tragic elegy to spirited women in decades past who were forced to silence their dreams and desires, and whose lives were not what they might otherwise have been.”
“A fiercely intelligent and captivating debut and an intimate portrait of female friendship, Autobiography of Us illuminates the challenges faced by an entire generation of American women.”
“A heartrending novel of two girls, the women they become, and the bond they forge that endures into the next generation. Aria Beth Sloss has written a lyrical and deeply moving love letter to the power of friendship.”
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