Alice Sadie Celine: A Novel

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Obsessed! Chlo Sevigny
I am literally obsessed. Busy Philipps

Hailed as richly intimate and wickedly delightful (The New York Times Book Review), this steamy and incisive debut adult novel follows one womans affair with her daughters best friend, testing the limits of love and ambition.

Its the opening night, but Alices performance in the local Bay Area production of The Winters Tale is far from glamourous. She doesnt have dreams of stardom, but the basement theater in a wildfire-choked town isnt 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 schoolreally one anothers only friendbut now that they are through with college (which they attended together) and living on opposite ends of California, Alice would at least expect her friends support. Sadie, determined not to cancel her plans with her boyfriend, ends up enlisting the help of her mother, Celine.

A professor of womens and gender studies at UC Berkeley, Celines landmark treatise on sex and identity made her notorious, but shes struggling to write her new book in a post-second-wave feminist world. So, when Sadie begs her to attend Alices play, she relents, if only to escape writers block. But in a turn of perplexing events, Celine becomes entranced by Alices performance and realizes that her daughters once lanky, slightly annoying best friend is now an irresistible young woman.

Set over the course of decadesfrom Alice and Sadies early friendship days and Celines decision to leave her husband to the radical movements of the 1990s Berkeley and navigating contemporary HollywoodAlice and Celines love 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 Blakely-Cartwrights adult debut is a heartfelt, smart, and keenly observed take on friendship (Town & Country) and a mesmerizing portrait of the inner lives of three very different women.

Reviews

"Obsessed! Each sentence of Alice Sadie Celine is chock full of playful irreverence for feminist and gender theory, hip popular culture references, and the wide breadth of what defines female sexuality."
--Chlo Sevigny

"I am literally obsessed."
--Busy Philipps, actress and New York Times bestselling author of This Will Only Hurt a Little

"The three unforgettable women in this novel remind me of the dancing figures in the Matisse painting, their secrets joyful and mysterious, their dramas delightful and powerful. Delicious and subversive, Alice Sadie Celine is a mesmerizing read."
--Yiyun Li, winner of the PEN Jean Stein Award, PEN Hemingway Award, and author of The Book of Goose and Where Reasons End

"Sarah Blakley-Cartwright subverts all kinds of expectations with this sharply drawn trio of strong-willed women. Vibrant, sensual, and full of irreverent humor, Alice, Sadie, Celine is an outstanding first novel."
--Idra Novey, author of Take What You Need

"Alice Sadie Celine is the story of a forbidden love triangle, of the complexities of female friendship, and of the inextricable bond between mothers and daughters. Taut, tense, sexy, and lucid, Sarah Blakley-Cartwright's debut adult novel is an unforgettable, irresistible, daring page-turner."
--Hannah Lillith Assadi, author of The Stars Are Not Yet Bells and Sonora

"Like Didion but with more warmth and a queer sensibility, Alice Sadie Celine is packed with so much of what I love in a book: tight prose, smart, fully realized characters grappling with inappropriate love affairs, and bright California land and light. It's extraordinarily lovely and I savored every word and didn't want it to end."
--Bethany Ball, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Finalist and author of The Pessimists

"Here come three indelible women and, with them, one of contemporary fiction's most delicious love triangles. Sarah Blakley-Cartwright has written a gem of a novel - super smart, slyly sexy, and crackling throughout with kindhearted humor."
--Hermione Hoby, author of Virtue

Author Bio

Sarah Blakley-Cartwright is the author of Red Riding Hood, a #1 New York Times bestseller published worldwide in thirty-eight editions and fifteen languages. She is the editor of Hauser & Wirths The Artists Library for Ursula magazine. She is publishing director of the Chicago Review of Books, and associate editor of A Public Space.