Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Weblink
http://www.hachettebookgroup.com …

CLASS

Lucinda Rosenfeld

A satirical novel about a mother whose life spirals out of control when she's forced to rethink her bleeding heart liberal ideals.

For idealistic forty-something Karen Kipple, it isn't enough that she works full-time in the non-profit sector, aiding an organization that helps hungry children from disadvantaged homes. She's also determined to live her personal life in accordance with her ideals. This means sending her daughter, Ruby, to an integrated public school in their Brooklyn neighborhood.

But when a troubled student from a nearby housing project begins bullying children in Ruby's class, the distant social and economic issues Karen has always claimed to care about so passionately feel uncomfortably close to home. As the situation at school escalates, Karen can't help but wonder whether her do-gooder husband takes himself and his causes more seriously than her work and Ruby's wellbeing.

A daring, discussable satire about gentrification and liberal hypocrisy, and a candid take on rich and poor, white and black, CLASS is also a smartly written story that reveals how life as we live it--not as we like to imagine it--often unfolds in gray areas.

Lucinda Rosenfeld is the author of the novels The Pretty One, What She Saw..., Why She Went Home, and I'm So Happy For You. Her fiction and essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Creative Non-Fiction, Slate.com, Glamour, and other magazines. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and two daughters.

Available products
Book Published 2017-01-01 by LIttle, Brown
Book Published 2017-01-01 by LIttle, Brown

Comments

CLASS is a brilliant depiction of the role of race and class in America seen through the lens of its public schools. This novel is brave, funny, and persuasive, and had me wincing like crazy with recognition. Lucinda Rosenfeld hits all the right notes.

With CLASS, Lucinda Rosenfeld has written a spot-on satire of the 'new' Brooklynites as they hit the parenting phase. Her Karen Kipple is a modern-day mom driven slightly mad by the conflict between her ideals and the reality subverting them. Over anxious and underappreciated, she still strives to do the right thing, and, like most of us, doesn't always succeed. Like its protagonist, this is a smart book that also knows how to have a little fun.

Karen is a flawed and unlikable character, to be sure, but a certain sector of readers will identify with her—cringing all the while. Rosenfeld’s sharp and searing look at race and class in urban America will make quite an impression on readers and will become an excellent book discussion selection. It will make readers uncomfortable, but for all the right reasons.

I haven’t liked being in a conflicted, bizarre, earnest, and tormented character’s head this much since the time I spent with Patty Berglund in Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom… CLASS is so good!!!

Lucinda Rosenfeld's deliciously smart and original new novel, CLASS, had me riveted from page one. Karen Kipple's ethical dilemmas will be familiar to any urbanite with a conscience. Rosenfeld has pulled off something rare-she has shown it's possible to write a fun and juicy-yet also sincere-book about liberal guilt and social hypocrisy.