Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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Fiction & Related items

LAURA & EMMA

Kate Greathead

Laura & Emma is the story of a single mother raising her daughter among the upper crust of New York City society in the late 20th century.

Laura hails from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, born into old money, drifting aimlessly into her early thirties. One weekend in 1981 she meets Jefferson. The two sleep together, he vanishes and Laura realizes she’s pregnant. Enter: Emma.
Despite her progressive values, Laura raises Emma by herself in the same blue-blood world of private schools and summer homes she grew up in, buoyed by a host of indelible characters, including her eccentric mother, who informs her society friends and Emma herself that she was fathered by a Swedish sperm donor; her brother, whose childhood stutter reappears in the presence of their forbidding father; an exceptionally kind male pediatrician; and her overbearing best friend, whose life has followed the Park Avenue script in every way except for childbearing. Meanwhile, the apple falls far from the tree with Emma, who begins to question her environment in a way her mother never could.

Told in vignettes that mine the profound from the mundane, with meditations on everything from sex and death to insomnia and the catharsis of crying on the subway, a textured portrait emerges of a woman struggling to understand herself, her daughter, and the changing landscape of New York City in the 80s and 90s. In the end, Laura & Emma is an acutely insightful exploration of class and family warfare from a new author whose offbeat sensibility, understated wit, and stylish prose celebrate the comedy and pathos that make us human.

Kate Greathead appears regularly on the ever-popular Moth story slam, where she is an eight-time Moth story slam champion, of which one episode appeared in NPR’s Moth story hour. Kate is also one of the few subjects featured in the American Up documentary series (modeled off the British Up series), which ran on PBS and chronicled the lives of a cross-section of subjects at ages seven, fourteen, and twenty-one; the novel is partially informed by her experiences on the show. (Kate is also married to S&S author Teddy Wayne (THE LOVESONG OF JOHNNY VALENTINE; LONER) and she’s connected in the right literary crowds that will garner both support and attention).

Available products
Book Published 2018-03-13 by Simon & Schuster
Book Published 2018-03-13 by Simon & Schuster

Comments

[A] warmhearted debut novel....The supporting characters who come in and out of Laura's life over the years sparkle with idiosyncrasies...Greathead is a talented writer of detail, particularly in her evocations of New York life - subway sobbing, could-be celebrity sightings, the joy of a favorite grocery store...This is a thoughtful novel of trying to find oneself despite an assigned place in the world.

I stayed up all night to finish Laura & Emma. Weeks later, I'm still thinking about Laura, still bothered by her troubles, and marveling at how Kate Greathead made these characters and this world so real to me. A brave, unassuming, wonderful first novel.

This debut from nine-time Moth StorySLAM winner Kate Greathead gives readers a behind-the-scenes peek at the lavish world of Upper East Side society through a series of vignettes.

For a privileged Manhattan daughter who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, raising a child alone is pearl-clutchingly radical in Kate Greathead's wryly observed, 1980s-set first novel.

This ultimately rather mysterious book, with its attenuated plot and restrained humor, is like a person who speaks so softly that you end up paying very close attention.

A funny and odd in-the-best-way book that reflects a slice of New York life in the '80s and '90s.

A big-hearted book, tenderly intelligent and mirthfully incisive in its exploration of family, class, and the difficulty of reconciling our own natures with the way we nurture others. In Greathead's capable hands, Laura & Emma become luminously real, a lens through which the rarefied, often contradictory world of elite New York comes charmingly alive.

Laura & Emma is stylish and understated, with grace notes everywhere, ironic reversals, and resonant lines of dialogue that quiver with multiple meanings...Greathead is such a keen observer of this world of people laden by the customs of privilege, who struggle to express their feelings, or even have them in the first place, and she finds affect in unexpected corners. ... It's devastating to watch these characters sabotage their own and others' happiness, and Greathead sticks the landing with a remarkably moving ending.

From this slightly ignominious beginning, Greathead, a nine-time Moth StorySLAM champion, spins a complex tale of social class and family warfare that follows the quiet struggles of a single mother raising her daughter among the upper crust of New York society.

This novel makes a seemingly unlikable character sympathetic and interesting to the point that her story becomes unputdownable.

Kate Greathead classes it up with her debut, Laura & Emma.

A deft exploration of conflict, both class and interfamilial, in 1980s blue-blood New York.

Who wouldn't want to get an inside peek into the rarefied world of New York City's elite in the 1980s and 90s? That's exactly what this smart, witty novel offers as it explores the strength of the bonds of family, class, weather, and privilege, leading many of its characters (to say nothing of its readers) wondering just how strong their own constructed identities are, and what it might take to make everything come crashing down.

The darkly funny way that single, thirtysomething Laura gets pregnant in 1981 sets the tone for Greathead's polished debut... Most impressive are the ways Greathead restrainedly shows her characters stretching at the seams of their own by-now-inherited restraint, and she paints their immense privilege with knowing nuance. Greathead's smart and original take on the mother-daughter novel impresses and charms.