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The Wonder Bread Summer: A Novel

Page 25

by Jessica Anya Blau


  —Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang

  “At the end of the day, the Stein family is dysfunctional, foul-mouthed, appalling, loving and ridiculously endearing, thanks to Blau’s hilarious rendition of their group dynamic. Soundtrack? Hotel California. Woody Allen directs.”

  —Baltimore Sun

  “The domestic relationships . . . are brilliantly rendered, a contemporary California version of Philip Roth.”

  —Austin Chronicle

  “If you think you’ve read enough novels about mixed up families already, go ahead and read one more. Jessica Anya Blau’s Drinking Closer to Home is a phantasmagoric, hilarious carnival ride.”

  —Madison Smartt Bell

  “An entertaining romp through one family’s history.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Imagine a home with a nudist mother, a bird that perches on the living room curtain rod and shits on the couch, and an empty pool in the backyard filled with bikes. Imagine growing up in this home and then returning as an adult to the hospital bedside of this nudist mother. Drinking Closer to Home is a gloriously rich portrait of three adult children who discover that the tensions and hurts they still have between them are inextricably tied to their laughter and their love.”

  —Susan Henderson, author of Up from the Blue

  “A light-hearted, enthralling read that enables us to laugh at our own less-than-perfect families.”

  —Bust

  “The sharpness of Jessica Anya Blau’s voice and wit never ceases to amaze me. From the first page this surprising novel takes a classic tale—adult children going home again—and turns it on its head. An absorbing, heart-wrenching read.”

  —Katie Crouch, author of Men and Dogs

  “Reminiscent of Jeannette Wall’s The Glass Castle, Jessica Anya Blau’s sophomore effort is a raging success. With incredible insight and endless imagination, Blau has created the über-dysfunctional family that survives cringe-worthy encounters, yet manages to forge ironclad bonds.”

  —New York Journal of Books

  “From painful humor to poignant scene-setting, [Blau] takes no prisoners in her candid look at an unconventional clan.”

  —Booklist

  “The hilariously irreverent sibling triad in Drinking Closer to Home had me laughing so hard at their gallows humor that I didn’t realize how devastated I was until I was fully under their spell. This unconventional joy ride of a novel is also an unexpectedly powerful and multilayered exploration of unbreakable family bonds.”

  —Gina Frangello, author of Slut Lullabies

  “Blau writes funny, often heartbreaking, and always relatable anecdotes . . . [Her] lifelike characters are such a joy to get to know that one feels sorry to leave them behind.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Drinking Closer to Home is as raw and heartbreaking as it is tender. Jessica Anya Blau has written an honest, haunting portrayal of a beguiling yet maddening family who together come of age amid the shifting morals of a country on the cusp of tremendous cultural change. With humor, compassion, and a keen insight into the human psyche, Drinking Closer to Home proves that despite the best of intentions, where we come from and where we end up are even closer than we could ever imagine.”

  —Robin Antalek, author of The Summer We Fell Apart

  Copyright

  An incarnation of the first chapter originally appeared in New York Tyrant Magazine.

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

  Excerpt from Drinking Closer to Home copyright © 2010 by Jessica Anya Blau.

  THE WONDER BREAD SUMMER. Copyright © 2013 by Jessica Anya Blau. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  978-0-06-219955-3

  EPub Edition June 2013 ISBN: 9780062199560

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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