The Strays

By Emily Bitto,

Book cover of The Strays

Book description

"Disturbing and magical....with a grace and eloquence." - NPR Books

"Full of lush, mesmerizing detail and keen insight into the easy intimacy between young girls which disappears with adulthood." -- The New Yorker

"The Strays is a knowing novel, and beautifully done." -- Meg Wolitzer, New York Times bestselling author…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Strays as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

If you like lushly written literary fiction about art, desire, friendship, and ambition, you’ll love The Strays.

Lily and Eva meet as children, and Eva – the daughter of a famous modernist artist – soon draws solitary Lily into her avant-garde family life. As the years pass and the two begin to leave childhood behind, their relationship makes new demands of them both.

Although The Strays features a large cast of characters in its makeshift family of artists, the connection between Eva and Lily is the beating heart of the novel, and is by turns tender, destructive, and tragic. 

From Joanna's list on complex female friendship.

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Secrets, misunderstandings, and a plethora of family conflicts abound in this historical novel set along the Brazos River in antebellum Washington County, East Texas.

It is a compelling story of two neighboring plantation families and a few of the enslaved people who serve them. These two plantations are a microcosm…

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