SUNDAY IS ON THE PHONE TO MONDAY

The Middlesteins meets The Virgin Suicides in this arresting family love story about the eccentric yet tightknit Simone family, coping with tragedy in '90s Manhattan and struggling to find each other again and heal.

For readers who adore Miranda July's sharp and lyrical prose (No One Belongs Here More Than You, The First Bad Man) and Jeffrey Eugenides' tender depictions of dysfunctional families (Virgin Suicides, Middlesex), this luminous debut navigates the dark and richly vibrant history of the Simone family, set in the 1990s on the Upper West Side. Parents Claudio and Mathilde, once romantic bohemians hopelessly enamored of each other, find themselves nestled numbly in domesticity with three daughters: cold Natasha, a prodigy; sensitive Lucy, an artist with a debilitating heart condition; and Carly, adopted from China and tirelessly fixated on her true origins.

Published in more than fifty literary journals, Christine Reilly transplants her deft hand at poetry to explore with breathtaking prose and remarkable keenness the ways that death and mental illness can strengthen familial ties, but at the same time tear each family member apart as they struggle to cope. Sidesplittingly eccentric, heartwrenchingly poignant, but always with unrelenting humanity, this story shines a light on a family's strength in the face of tragedy.

Christine Reilly lives in New York City, where she teaches at the Dalton School. She has been published in more than fifty journals, including the Adirondack Review, Solo Novo, and Lifelines, Dartmouth's Medical School Journal. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University and her Master’s degree in writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Reilly is also a former fashion model and has done commercial work for Yves St. Laurent, Elizabeth Arden, and Moroccan Oil. She has published two chapbooks of poetry with small presses. Sunday Is the Phone to Monday is her first novel.