âObsessed!â âChloĂŤ Sevigny
âI am literally obsessed.â âBusy Philipps
Hailed as ârichly intimateâ and âwickedly delightfulâ (The New York Times Book Review), this steamy and incisive debut adult novel follows one womanâs affair with her daughterâs best friend, testing the limits of love and ambition.
Itâs opening night, but Aliceâs performance in the local Bay Area production of The Winterâs Tale is far from glamorous. She doesnât have dreams of stardom, but the basement theater in a wildfire-choked town isnât exactly what she envisioned for her career back home in Los Angeles. To make matters worse, her best friend Sadie is not even coming.
Pragmatic, serious Sadie and flighty, creative Alice have been best friends since high schoolâreally one anotherâs only friendsâbut now that they are through with college (which they attended together) and living on opposite ends of California, Alice would at least expect her friendâs support. Sadie, determined not to cancel her plans with her boyfriend, ends up enlisting the help of her mother, Celine.
A professor of womenâs and gender studies at UC Berkeley, Celineâs landmark treatise on sex and identity made her notorious, but sheâs struggling to write her new book in a post-second-wave feminist world. So, when Sadie begs her to attend Aliceâs play, she relents, if only to escape writerâs block. But in a turn of perplexing events, Celine becomes entranced by Aliceâs performance and realizes that her daughterâs once lanky, slightly annoying best friend is now an irresistible young woman.
Set over the course of decadesâfrom Alice and Sadieâs early friendship days and Celineâs decision to leave her husband to the radical movements of 1990s Berkeley and navigating contemporary HollywoodâAlice and Celineâs affair will test the limits of their love for Sadie and their own beliefs of power, agency, and feminism. Witty and relatable, sexy and surprising, Sarah Blakley-Cartwrightâs debut adult novel is a mesmerizing portrait of the inner lives of three very different women.