All the Things We Don't Talk About

(Hardback)

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Description

Morgan Flowers just wants to hide. Raised by their neurodivergent father, Morgan has grown up haunted by the absence of their mysterious mother Zoe, especially now, as they navigate their gender identity and the turmoil of first love. Their father Julian has raised Morgan with care, but he can't quite fill the gap left by the dazzling and destructive Zoe, who fled to Europe on Morgan's first birthday. And when Zoe is dumped by her girlfriend Brigid, she suddenly comes crashing back into Morgan and Julian's lives, poised to disrupt the fragile peace they have so carefully cultivated.

Through it all, Julian and Brigid have become unlikely pen-pals and friends, united by the knowledge of what it's like to love and lose Zoe; they both know that she hasn't changed. Despite the red flags, Morgan is swiftly drawn into Zoe's glittering orbit and into a series of harmful missteps, and Brigid may be the only link that can pull them back from the edge. A story of betrayal and trauma alongside queer love and resilience, ALL THE THINGS WE DON'T TALK ABOUT is a celebration of and a reckoning with the power and unintentional pain of a thoroughly modern family.

Reviews

"Your typical modern family drama has NOTHING on this big-hearted novel."--Cosmopolitan
"Original and layered, this evocatively modern story centers a nonbinary teen, their neurodivergent father and the woman who abandoned them both, who unexpectedly returns out of the blue."--Ms. Magazine
"Following her 2019 debut novel, Willa & Hesper, a carefully wrought story about two young women falling in love, Amy Feltman's All the Things We Don't Talk About is a book fans have been anxiously waiting for. And one that will likely win Feltman some new ones."--Xtra Magazine
"This coming-of-age story is achingly tender and will remind readers of any age what it's like to be a teen who wears their heart on the outside."--Good Housekeeping
"[A] nuanced portrait of a nonbinary teen's coming-of-age amid intense family dynamics. . . Feltman brings empathy and moments of grace to her characters. This is worth a look."--Publishers Weekly

"Feltman's writing succeeds in depicting each of these characters with nuance and grace. . . [R]eaders are sure to find characters to root for and identify with."

--Booklist
"[T]he complex relationship between Morgan and Julian places this novel solidly in the category of worthwhile reads. . . A multidimensional family drama."--Kirkus Reviews
"Are you tired of cookie-cutter family dramas You don't have to worry about that with All The Things We Don't Talk About. . . Feltman's portrait of complex familial relationships is deeply absorbing and emblematic of the complicated nature of love."--Buzzfeed
"As contemporary and surprising as it is acutely felt, Amy Feltman's All The Things We Don't Talk About explores all the ways we get in our own way as we try and fail and try again to care for one another, how love that's flawed can still be fierce and true, worth fighting for."--Lynn Steger Strong, author of Want
"Serving up nuance, ambivalence, texture, and joy with a splash of humor, All the Things We Don't Talk About is the queer domestic novel of my dreams. It's all here--the ways families are evolving and must evolve into our increasingly liberated and uncertain future, deep examinations of class privilege, and deeply moving characters."--Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of The Third Rainbow Girl
"All the Things We Don't Talk About is a deeply moving, intimate family saga, and one of those rare novels that is attuned to the smallest shifts within each character. Amy Feltman is a master storyteller and keeps us on our toes until the very end."--Sana Lemoine, author of The Margot Affair
PRAISE FOR WILLA & HESPER

"A debut novel for those who loved Everything is Illuminated but updated with a queer-young-romance- twist. The title characters in Amy Feltman's Willa & Hesper find solace from their breakup in the rabbit holes of their European Jewish background."--New York Times Book Review

"All the Things We Don't Talk About is big-hearted, humane, and governed by a keen emotional intelligence; Feltman has deftly drawn a lively and expansive portrait of a family that I grew to love and was sad to leave. "--Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had
"Willa & Hesper is a novel with a beating heart, a love story that is also an intricate love affair with time, history, religion and inheritance. In fresh and captivating prose, and spanning three vibrantly-rendered countries, Amy Feltman's debut enthralled me."--Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists
"A haunting story of aching love and grief, desire and hope. . . Willa & Hesper, is the story of such a love, and so, of course, it is also the story of heartbreak and longing, searches for identity, struggles to make sense of the world and of each other."--Nylon
"After crystallizing in the thrill of a new relationship, Feltman adeptly captures each progression of the stages of heartbreak. This is a cathartic break-up read if there ever was one."--Refinery29
"This debut is tender and tough, startlingly intimate, yet attuned to the larger troubles of our current political moment. A moving portrait of two young women, reckoning with themselves and their world, in hopes of finding their way back to one another."--Naima Coster, New York Times bestselling author of What's Mine and Yours

Author Bio

Amy Feltman graduated with an M.F.A. in Fiction from Columbia University in 2016 and is Assistant Director of Advertising at Poets & Writers Magazine. She is the author of Willa & Hesper, which was long-listed for the National Jewish Book Awards' Goldberg Prize for Debut Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, The Believer Logger, The Toast, The Millions, The Rumpus, Lilith Magazine, Slice Magazine, and elsewhere. She lives with her partner in Astoria, NY.