Central Places
Delia Cai
Nov 2023 · Random House
Ebook
288
Pages
family_home
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About this ebook
A TIMES BOOK OF THE MONTH AND STYLIST BOOK OF THE WEEK
A BAD FORM REVIEW PAPERBACK BOOK OF THE MONTH
'Sharp, swiftly moving, darkly funny . . . [a] compassion filled delight' The Times
'[A] sharp, assured debut' Daily Mail
'A sensitive, sharp-eyed, slyly funny novel of venturing back into the foreign country that is your past— and discovering that you can never really shake the places and people that shaped you' Celeste Ng, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Our Missing Hearts
'Delia Cai fully renders the uneasy marriage between past and present. Central Places is honest about the strangeness and revelation of returning home' Raven Leilani, New York Times bestselling author of Luster
Audrey Zhou left Hickory Grove, the tiny central Illinois town where she grew up, as soon as high school ended, and she never looked back. She moved to New York City and became the person she always wanted to be, complete with a high-paying, high-pressure job and a seemingly faultless fiancé. But if she and Manhattan-bred Ben are to build a life together, in the dream home his parents will surely pay for, Audrey can no longer hide him, or the person she's become, from those she left behind.
But returning to Hickory Grove is . . . complicated. Over the course of one disastrous week, Audrey's proximity to her family and to Kyle, her unrequited high school crush, forces her to confront the past and reexamine her fraught connection to her roots before she undoes everything she's worked toward and everything she's imagined for herself. But is that life really the one she wants?
A BAD FORM REVIEW PAPERBACK BOOK OF THE MONTH
'Sharp, swiftly moving, darkly funny . . . [a] compassion filled delight' The Times
'[A] sharp, assured debut' Daily Mail
'A sensitive, sharp-eyed, slyly funny novel of venturing back into the foreign country that is your past— and discovering that you can never really shake the places and people that shaped you' Celeste Ng, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Our Missing Hearts
'Delia Cai fully renders the uneasy marriage between past and present. Central Places is honest about the strangeness and revelation of returning home' Raven Leilani, New York Times bestselling author of Luster
Audrey Zhou left Hickory Grove, the tiny central Illinois town where she grew up, as soon as high school ended, and she never looked back. She moved to New York City and became the person she always wanted to be, complete with a high-paying, high-pressure job and a seemingly faultless fiancé. But if she and Manhattan-bred Ben are to build a life together, in the dream home his parents will surely pay for, Audrey can no longer hide him, or the person she's become, from those she left behind.
But returning to Hickory Grove is . . . complicated. Over the course of one disastrous week, Audrey's proximity to her family and to Kyle, her unrequited high school crush, forces her to confront the past and reexamine her fraught connection to her roots before she undoes everything she's worked toward and everything she's imagined for herself. But is that life really the one she wants?
About the author
Delia Cai was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and grew up in central Illinois. She is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism and her writing has appeared in BuzzFeed, GQ, The Cut, and Catapult. Her media newsletter, Deez Links, has been highlighted in The New York Times, New York magazine, and Fortune. She is currently a senior correspondent at Vanity Fair and lives in Brooklyn. Central Places is her first novel.
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