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This "highly-anticipated" (People) inaugural novel in the Well-Read Black Girl × Liveright series is a darkly whimsical debut about women daring to live and create with impunity.
Twin sisters Clara and Dempsey have always struggled to relate, their familial bond severed after their mother vanished into the Thames. In adulthood, they are content to be all but estranged, until Clara sees a woman who looks exactly like their mother on the streets of London. The catch: this version of Serene, aged not a day, has enjoyed a childless life.
Clara, a celebrity author in desperate need of validation, believes Serene is their mother, while Dempsey, isolated and content to remain so, believes she is a con woman. As they clash over this stranger, the sisters hurtle toward an altercation that threatens their very existence, forcing them to finally confront their pasts―together. In her riveting first foray into fiction, Yrsa Daley-Ward conjures a kaleidoscopic multiverse of daughterhood and mother-want, exploring the sacrifices that Black women must make for self-actualization. The result is a marvel of a debut novel that boldly asks, "How can it ever, ever be a crime to choose yourself?"
"[I]nventive...Elegant and unpredictable in the best possible way." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[E]ngrossing...The dreamy novel is propelled by searching questions about how to be a mother and how to find fulfillment. It's a singular family drama." —Publishers Weekly
"The first work in Liveright's Well-Read Black Girl Books line (a collaboration with the book club founded by Glory Edim) is recommended for readers who appreciate finely wrought descriptions of people, places, and moments in time and are open to redefining what constitutes a happy ending." —Library Journal
"[A] hotly-anticipated new novel." ―People
This information about The Catch was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Yrsa Daley-Ward is a poet, writer, and actress. She is the author of The How, bone, and The Terrible, for which she won the PEN Ackerley Prize. She lives in Los Angeles.
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