Books

The Melting Season

Kirkus Reviews says: “An intelligent, moving portrait of a journey to self-awareness, with meaty characters and a refreshing absence of psychobabble.”

I was on the edge of something dire. All it took was a little push.  That was when I realized what needed to happen.

I can take it all and no one can stop me.

And there was nothing left to do afterward but get the hell out of town.
 
Catherine Madison is headed West with a suitcase full of cash that isn’t hers. She’s just left the only home she’s ever known, a small town in Nebraska, after the only man she had ever known, her husband, Thomas, deserted her. She’s also left behind her deepest, most shameful secrets-among them a dysfunctional family she’s never quite been able to escape and a marriage whose most intimate moments have plagued her with self-doubt. On the road, she was going to become a new person. Or so she thought.

But running away from the past isn’t as easy as she had hoped. When Catherine reaches Las Vegas, she forms surprising new friendships that compel her to reveal what she had sworn she’d keep hidden, and teach her what human connection really means. Armed with this new knowledge, she is finally emboldened to uncover the truth about her family, come to understand what destroyed her marriage, and prevent her troubled sister from repeating her mistakes.

Deeply compassionate and unflinchingly bold, The Melting Season is the story of an indelible character’s journey from isolation to belonging, as well as an honest look at the things we feel we deserve from our lives- and how far we will go to find them.
 
Read an excerpt | Press
The Melting Season is available January 2010 from Riverhead Books.




The Kept Man

People Magazine says: “Written in relaxed yet fresh prose, Attenberg’s debut is unabashedly emotional, refreshingly devoid of New York City cynicism and tenderly funny.“

There was the ambulance, and a lot of noise, and me and Martin in the hospital, paint on his face, paint on my knees, the two of us the weirdest people in the room, as usual, only this time I didn’t have anyone to talk to but myself.

Six years ago, Jarvis Miller’s husband, an artist whose career was poised to take off, fell into a coma. And ever since, she’s been waiting. She has waited at his bedside, leaning against the nursing home’s yellow walls and then waited a day for her depression to subside after every visit. She has waited for doctors and prescriptions, all the newest and best; for cars to take her home; for checks to sign; and most of all she has waited for her husband to wake up. But after six years of dwindling hope, living as a half-widow, and selling off pieces of her husband’s artwork to pay for the machines that keep him alive, Jarvis has come to admit that she’s waiting for her husband to die.

Then one spring day when her washing machine breaks down, Jarvis meets the members of the Kept Man Club: three handsome, interesting men, all married to readwinner wives, who meet once a week at a local laundromat. Their companionship opens her eyes to the possibilities of family, warmth, and friendship she’s been missing, and they become her first new friends in six years. At the same time, her husband’s best friend and his art dealer pressure Jarvis to gather the remainder of his work for a retrospective – a proposition that produces mixed feelings, since it’s an honor usually reserved for the already dead. Sorting through a hidden box of photographs, she uncovers evidence of a shocking betrayal that calls into question her idealized vision of the past.
 
Read an excerpt | Press
The Kept Man is available January 2008 from Riverhead Books.



INSTANT LOVE

On O Magazine’s “What You’re Really Going to Want to Read this Summer” list and Seattle P-I’s summer reading list. Daily Candy called it “The summer’s must-read.”

We are all walking around this city with our hearts sadly swimming in our chests, like a dying fish on the surface of a still pond. It’s enough to make you give up entirely.

Told through the eyes of three young women and their friends and lovers, Jami Attenberg’s powerful debut explores what it means to be in love, what it means to be lonely, and what it means to be both at the same time. Holly turns to computer dating for late night hook ups even as she thinks wistfully of a former boyfriend who loved her well and fed her ice cream. Maggie recounts the story of her one crazy summer to her disbelieving husband and feels the distance between them grow wider than the void across their king sized bed. And Sarah Lee remembers the one who got away and the one she ran away from, all the while moving toward the one she can actually love. Through their stories, Attenberg presents a rare, honest look at love.
 
Press
Instant Love is available from Crown/Shaye Areheart Books.