Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher

THE DAUGHTERS

Adrienne Celt

A virtuosic debut about a young soprano who finds she cannot bring herself to sing a single note after the birth of her daughter, wondering if her long-feared family curse has struck at last.

Are we defined more by our choices, or by the circumstances of our birth? Rusalka (in Slavic folklore, a ghost-like water nymph or mythical water demon) follows Lulu, a gifted operatic soprano, whose beloved Polish grandmother raised her to believe that her musical talents were the result of her great-grandmother’s deal with the devil. Lulu’s mother, Sara, a washed-up jazz singer, told a darker version of the story, in which Lulu’s great-grandmother’s choices also doom the family to lives of sacrifice. Until now, Lulu always shrugged off Sara’s sinister threats. But after Lulu almost dies giving birth to her daughter – the product of an affair – she must determine if this family legend has the power to destroy her. By traveling back through the stories that shaped her childhood, and examining her own selfish decisions she made while touring Mongolia and Poland, Lulu will discover if her ultimate sacrifice is her marriage, her music… or her life. From the descriptions of opera to scenes steeped with rich, Polish mythology, Adrienne is a gorgeous stylist, and the story is both suspenseful and deeply moving. Like Téa Obreht’s The Tiger's Wife or Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love, Rusalka is an intergenerational story with international leanings, but with the lyrical, mystical construction of Paul Harding’s Tinkers. Adrienne’s fiction appears or is forthcoming in Esquire, The Kenyon Review, Carve Magazine, The Southeast Review, Puerto del Sol, and Gargoyle, and her translations and essays have appeared in The Rumpus, Cerise Press, Lemon Hound, and elsewhere. Adrienne has an MFA in fiction from Arizona State University, and has taught writing at ASU, the National University of Singapore, and StoryStudio Chicago. She is a finalist in the 2013 storySouth Million Writers Award, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was awarded residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Ragdale, and received a number of grants from ASU to travel to Poland and research Rusalka. Adrienne also draws wonderful weekly webcomics at loveamongthelampreys.com and is at work on a new novel.

Available products
Book Published 2015-08-03 by Liveright/Norton

Comments

Celt's family saga—steeped in folklore and vibrating with music—is as much about the power of storytelling as the fraught relationships between mothers and daughters… A haunting novel with real emotional depth, Celt's psychologically nuanced debut continues to resonate long after the last page has been turned.

THE DAUGHTERS is a beautifully written exploration of the myths and the realities that bind families together that will leave readers eagerly awaiting Celt’s next novel..

on Oprah.com as One of 16 Books to Curl Up with This Fall Read more...

Brimming with sad, delicious folklore and echoing with the voices of five generations of mothers and daughters in a family shaped by music as much as by tragedy, Celt’s debut is enchanting.

Electric Lit ran an interview with Adrienne (July 2015) Read more...

Short story and comics creator Celt interweaves themes of music, motherhood, and myth in her lyrical debut novel…. The novel’s luminous prose, subtle structure, and rich contrast between present-day Chicago and Old World folklore help craft a resonant meditation on the way our stories at once shape and sabotage our lives.

THE DAUGHTERS is one of O Magazine’s “10 Titles to Pick Up Now” in their August issue, saying, “After the birth of her daughter, opera sensation Lulu fears a family curse has made her lose her voice, in Celt’s lyrical debut novel about the perplexing riddle of inheritance.”

First serial on Electric Lit ran July 29th in their Recommended Reading (recommended by Tara Ison) Read more...

One of the many pleasures of THE DAUGHTERS is the dizzying surfeit of female characters, their stories entangled and entwined with each other, and the novel's blood and backbone…. Here is one you should not miss, a gratifying feast in lush, lyrical, and full-throated form.

Celt's writing is lyric, and she paces the novel with careful placement of slow-but-foreboding scenes and sweeping, operatic ones...But plot — most of it in the past, and far away in Greta's tiny village in Poland — doesn't drive the novel to its end. Instead, it's the simmering psychological reveal, that tugging of strings, the unfolding of complex characters whose actions Lulu doesn't always understand. And she is one of them — different, but just as layered and nuanced as Sara, Ada and Greta. The final notes of "The Daughters" might surprise you, but in the end it's the journey through song and myth, the cost of motherhood and the price of passion, that will resonate long after the last page. Read more...

A lush song of a book that understands the intertwined beauty and fear of motherhood and daughterhood, and the music a good story makes.

Adrienne Celt’s stunning debut novel, like its narrator, sings. There is so much to applaud in THE DAUGHTERS—its love song to the world of opera, its masterful retelling of ancient Polish fables, and, above all, its examination of the complexity of modern love, in all its varieties.

THE DAUGHTERS was one of Bustle’s 16 Best August Books: http://www.bustle.com/articles/91255-16-of-august-2015s-best-books-youll-love-no-matter-what-youre-looking-for-this-month; also one of 17 of their Best Summer Reads: http://www.bustle.com/articles/81891-17-of-the-best-books-of-summer-2015-to-keep-you-reading-from-the-kickoff-bbq Read more...