October 30, 2017
Aliu juxtaposes a mother and daughter’s late teenage desperation 17 years apart in her striking first novel. In the mid-’90s, Elsie waits tables at a greasy spoon in post-industrial Waterbury, Conn. She pins her hopes for upward mobility on Bashkim, an Albanian immigrant who left his wife in the old country and funnels all his money into mysterious investments. An unplanned pregnancy forces them into uneasy cohabitation, where Elsie copes with her mother’s pessimism, the derision of the Albanian wives of Bashkim’s friends, and her partner’s alarming volatility. Aliu intersperses the story of their daughter, Luljeta, a senior in high school whose own hopes for escape from Waterbury are dashed with a rejection from NYU. As she reels, she also discovers her extended Albanian family still lives in the area and can answer questions about the father her mother claimed had died. With the help of Albanian teenager Ahmet, whose modest dreams of Panera franchises starkly contrast with Luljeta’s glamorous goals of leaving town, she sets off to finally find her father. This is a captivating, moving story of drastic measures, failed schemes, and the loss of innocence. Agent: Julie Barer, The Book Group.
Starred review from November 1, 2017
Rage and hilarity form a dynamic symbiosis in Aliu's debut novel, a stinging mother-and-daughter duet. Set in the defeated town of Waterbury, Connecticut, after its once-sustaining brass manufacturing industry went bust, it kicks off with Elsie giving up on high school and taking a job at a diner run by Albanian refugees. Elise has no memories of her father, who abandoned her, her brainy younger sister, and their sardonic, alcoholic mother Well-armored with low expectations and orneriness, Elsie falls into a rough affair of convenience (car sex in the diner parking lot) with Bashkim, a volatile cook battered by the horrors he escaped and worried about his wife, who refuses to leave Albania. Then Elsie gets pregnant. Her trenchant story alternates with that of her daughter, Luljeta, a high-school senior suddenly intent, 17 years later, on finding the father she knows nothing about. Also the author of a story collection, Domesticated Wild Things and Other Stories (2013), Aliu is spectacularly funny and deeply insightful. With all-the-way-live characters, vigorous observations, combative dialogue, bravado metaphors, and ninja parsing of social class, immigrant struggles, bad behavior, and stubborn hope, Aliu has created a boldly witty and astute inquiry into the nature-versus-nurture debate, the inheritance of pain, and the dream of transcendence.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)
Starred review from November 15, 2017
DEBUT Home at last. That's what the people in Aliu's first novel are seeking: a feeling of belonging, a sense of possibilities. Originally from Lithuania, Elsie's family settles in a working-class town in Connecticut, where brass factories provide employment for the many immigrants who have come there. Elsie works at the local diner and finds what she is looking for in Bashkim, who also works there. Although he has a family back in Albania, he and Elsie get together in what becomes an unfortunate relationship. Seventeen years later, Lulu, Elsie's daughter, searches for new possibilities and is hampered by frustration. She knows nothing of her father, and asking her mother for answers goes nowhere. She decides to take on her own search for his identity, in the hopes that finding this piece of the puzzle will help everything in her life fall into place. VERDICT Deftly written in a style that is evocative of time and place, this universal story of the search for home is well translated into the blue-collar world of Elsie and Lulu. [See Prepub Alert, 7/31/17.]--Susanne Wells, Indianapolis P.L.
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
November 15, 2017
DEBUT Home at last. That's what the people in Aliu's first novel are seeking: a feeling of belonging, a sense of possibilities. Originally from Lithuania, Elsie's family settles in a working-class town in Connecticut, where brass factories provide employment for the many immigrants who have come there. Elsie works at the local diner and finds what she is looking for in Bashkim, who also works there. Although he has a family back in Albania, he and Elsie get together in what becomes an unfortunate relationship. Seventeen years later, Lulu, Elsie's daughter, searches for new possibilities and is hampered by frustration. She knows nothing of her father, and asking her mother for answers goes nowhere. She decides to take on her own search for his identity, in the hopes that finding this piece of the puzzle will help everything in her life fall into place. VERDICT Deftly written in a style that is evocative of time and place, this universal story of the search for home is well translated into the blue-collar world of Elsie and Lulu. [See Prepub Alert, 7/31/17.]--Susanne Wells, Indianapolis P.L.
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
September 1, 2017
Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize for her debut fiction collection, Aliu tells the story of teenage Luljeta, in identity crisis and insistent that her Lithuanian American mother, Elsie, tell her something about the Albanian father she's never met.
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from November 15, 2017
This glimmering debut novel reflects on mother-daughter connections, abandonment and resilience, and dreams that endure despite the odds.Coming of age circa 1996 in Waterbury, Connecticut, a chilly, gritty industrial city of abandoned brass factories and the workers left behind, Elsie dreams of a fast car out of town. Instead, and perhaps inevitably, she finds herself stuck, succumbing to the attentions of Bashkim, an Albanian line cook at the Betsy Ross Diner, where she slings fried foods for locals as a waitress. Bashkim, who has a wife back in Albania he says he plans to divorce, tells 18-year-old Elsie she's the most beautiful girl he's ever seen, teaches her to drive a stick shift, and promises to buy her whatever she wants when his investments pay off. Then he gets Elsie pregnant and sticks around long enough to compel her to keep the baby--a daughter, it turns out--but not long enough to help raise her. First-time novelist Aliu switches quickly between Elsie's story and that of her daughter, Luljeta, whom we meet when she is 17 and confronting her own urge to escape her fate as a fatherless child in a dead-end town of dusty dreams. Lulu, a bright young woman who has always worked hard and followed the rules, finds herself suddenly doubtful of her own future and scornful of the mother who, while dedicated to providing for her, has not provided answers about her past. And so Lulu goes looking for them in places both unfamiliar and, ultimately, long known. Aliu's riveting, sensitive work shines with warmth, clarity, and a generosity of spirit. Her characters are nuanced and real, capable of taking risks, making mistakes, and growing in unexpected ways.Aliu's writing is polished and precise, bringing her characters glowingly to life.
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