Fic­tion

The Lit­tle Clan

  • From the Publisher
March 29, 2018

A love let­ter to clas­sic lit­er­a­ture and an illu­mi­nat­ing look at new­found adulthood.

Ava Gal­lanter is the librar­i­an in res­i­dence at the Lazarus Club, an ancient, dwin­dling Man­hat­tan arts club full of eccen­tric geri­atric res­i­dents stuck in a long-gone era. Twen­ty-five-year-old Ava, how­ev­er, feels right at home. She leads a qui­et life, sur­round­ed by her beloved books and sequestered away from her peers.

When Ava’s enig­mat­ic friend Stephanie returns after an unplanned year abroad, the intox­i­cat­ing oppor­tunist vows to res­cue Ava from a life of obscu­ri­ty. Stephanie, on the hunt for fame and for­tune, promis­es to make Ava’s dream of becom­ing a writer come true, and togeth­er they start a Vic­to­ri­an-inspired lit­er­ary salon at the Lazarus Club. How­ev­er, Ava’s roman­ti­cized idea of the salon quick­ly erodes as Stephanie’s ambi­tions take the women in an unex­pect­ed, and pre­car­i­ous, direction.

In this humor­ous yet keen­ly obser­vant com­ing-of-age sto­ry, Cohen brings us into a bois­ter­ous lit­er­ary world bathed in hubris and ambi­tion. With elo­quent prose and affect­ing sto­ry­telling, The Lit­tle Clan is both a wicked­ly fun yet sharply insight­ful look at friend­ship, fem­i­nism and find­ing your­self in your twenties.

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