photo credit: Michael Lionstar
Thursday, January 31, at 6pm, a reading and discussion with Susan Conley, author of ELSEY COME HOME. ELSEY COME HOME is the January/February 2019 Books & Books @ The Studios Virtual Book Club pick. Bookclub discount available now through January 26th. (Online use code BC20 for 20% off). The event will be followed by a book signing.
“I loved ELSEY COME HOME. The exotic setting, the characters Elsey meets along the way—her husband, her little girls, her dilemma. And the writing, spare and lovely. What more can I say— perfect.” – Judy Blume, Books & Books @ The Studios co-founder.
From the widely praised author of Paris Was the Place — a shattering new novel that bravely delves into the darkest corners of addiction, marriage, and motherhood
When Elsey’s husband, Lukas, hands her a brochure for a weeklong mountain retreat, she knows he is really giving her an ultimatum: Go, or we’re done. Once a successful painter, Elsey set down roots in China after falling passionately for Lukas, the tall, Danish MC at a warehouse rave in downtown Beijing. Now, with two young daughters and unable to find a balance between her identities as painter, mother, and, especially, wife, Elsey fills her days worrying, drinking, and descending into desperate unhappiness. So, brochure in hand, she agrees to go and confront the ghosts of her past. There, she meets a group of men and women who will forever alter the way she understands herself: from Tasmin, another (much richer) expat, to Hunter, a young man whose courage endangers them all, and, most important, Mei — wife of one of China’s most famous artists and a renowned painter herself — with whom Elsey quickly forges a fierce friendship and whose candidness about her pain helps Elsey understand her own. But Elsey must risk tearing herself and Lukas further apart when she decides she must return to her childhood home — the center of her deepest pain — before she can find her way back to him. Written in a voice at once wry, sensual, blunt, and hypnotic, Elsey Come Home is a modern odyssey and a quietly dynamic portrait of contemporary womanhood.