Exposure: A Novel

by Ava Dellaira

Overview

GRIEF IS LIKE THIS . . .

Falling in love with your best friend, only to lose her to a mysterious death.

Working for decades to achieve a dream, and just when it’s within reach, watching it threaten to go up in flames.

Longing for your deceased father to celebrate with you when your first novel sells.

Spending the first sleepless months in the throes of new motherhood alone, as your husband struggles to save his career.

Befriending the woman who should be your enemy, because you are that lonely . . .

Annie, Jesse, Noah, and Juliette are tied together by their experiences of grief; they are separated by their own versions of the truth of what happened on a single night twelve years ago, when Juliette, a college freshman grieving her mother, and Noah, a high school senior fighting for a place in a world that told him he didn’t matter, found each other. Spanning decades, this complex, captivating story pulls back the curtains of cancel culture to explore ambition, empathy, art, desire, consent, motherhood, and what it really means to lose everything.

“I will be thinking about this book for a long time.”
—Sally Hepworth, author of Darling Girls

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781958506677
Publisher:	Zibby Publishing
Publication date:	09/10/2024
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	59,625
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Ava Dellaira is the author of the critically acclaimed young adult novels In Search of Us and Love Letters to the Dead, which was named Best Book of the Year by Apple, Google, BuzzFeed, the New York Public Library and the Chicago Public Library. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow, and the University of Chicago. She grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and now lives in Altadena, CA with her husband and their two young children.

Editorial Reviews

07/29/2024

Dellaira (In Search of Us) explores gender and racial power dynamics in her gripping debut. The narrative begins in 2004, when Black Chicago high schooler Noah King gets drunk with his creative writing instructor, a white college student named Juliette Marker, and goes home with her. Dellaira cuts the scene there, and a flash-forward reveals that, unbeknownst to Noah, Juliette will die two days later. The circumstances of Juliette’s death remain a mystery until the third act, when they’re uncovered in 2016 by Juliette’s best friend and lover Annie, who’s still racked with guilt over avoiding Juliette’s calls the day she died. A third plot thread tracks Noah’s departure from Chicago to Hollywood, where he starts a family with his novelist wife, Jesse. Now, he’s poised to break out as a screenwriter and director with the release of his much-anticipated debut film, which is based on his struggles after losing his mother at seven. Dellaira’s explorations of grief are complicated and wrenching, and she digs into multiple viewpoints to explore the complex issues that emerge once Juliette’s version of events with Noah comes to light. Readers of Celeste Ng should take note. Agent: Richard Florest, Rob Weisbach Creative. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

12/20/2024

Set in Chicago, Dellaira's (In Search of Us) adult debut pulsates with the city's energy. It offers readers familiar with the area strong sensory, sensual reference points that are depicted with enough details for the audience to feel at home in Juliette's, Annie's, Noah's, and Jesse's worlds. Beginning in 2004 with characters clinging to each other in high school, the book expands as their lives and identities do. That's especially the case when Noah succeeds as a filmmaker in Hollywood—an accomplishment that unfolds and unfurls through the complex, dynamic relationships driven by grief and desire. This successful grown-up departure from Dellaira's YA fiction brings readers into the beautiful, messy worlds and words of the four people at the center of the story. The novel is told from their perspectives as their lives became entwined through chance and through the obstacles they face while they pursue and experience various chapters in their lives. VERDICT Dellaira's novel will appeal to Sally Rooney fans for its emotional depth and to Danzy Senna readers for its exploration of the complex intersections between and interpretations of race, class, gender, and power in relationships.—Emily Bowles

Library Journal

Exposure is a must-read. In a time when so many cultural conversations turn black and white, this brilliant book provides a way to truly see two sides of a story. Ava Dellaira delivers a novel so gripping and breathtaking, you’ll be compelled to continue discussing it long after you’ve finished.”
—Stephen Chbosky, author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“This searingly brilliant novel defies all expectations: it is a bildungsroman, a meditation on friendship and artistic ambition, and an unflinching confrontation with the unreliability of memory and of truth. Dellaira has done the impossible; she has captured our era’s messy murky unknowing heart and done so with immense compassion and uncompromising verve and vaulted herself in the process into the top ranks of our literary culture.”
—Junot Díaz, author of This Is How You Lose Her

“Haunting and immersive, Exposure is a powerful narrative tackling the complexities of race, love, loneliness, and friendship. I will be thinking about this book for a long time.”
—Sally Hepworth, author of The Good Sister and Darling Girls 

“Exposure pulses with electricity and grips you from page one. Dellaira perfectly captures how a singular moment in time can reverberate and change lives forever. In a thoughtful exploration of race and the pursuit of ambition, this exquisite novel illustrates how messy and elusive truth can be, blurring the lines between bad and good.”
—Nancy Johnson, author of The Kindest Lie

“Ava Dellaira is a courageous and deeply empathetic author, writing with abundant control about the issues with the highest stakes: hopes, dreams, and ambition; the open wounds of grief and injustice. This novel is full of surprises, with comfort unearthed in the most unexpected places, and it explores the ways that the most unimaginable heartbreaks can metamorphose into sources of connection. As a character notes, resigned but far-sighted, considering these tender mutations: love always has the final say.”
—Sarah Blakley-Cartwright, author of Alice Sadie Celine

“Ava Dellaira’s Exposure is a compelling story of ambition, becoming, grief, and desire. Mysterious, haunting, and seductive.”
—Sanjena Sathian, author of Gold Diggers

“Exposure gracefully probes the ways the past can reach into the present and test everything we thought we knew about ourselves and those we hold close. Ava Dellaira has given us an empathetic exploration of creative ambition, grief, race, friendship, and ultimately, the strength and elasticity of love in all of its many forms. A captivating and beautifully crafted story.”
—Caitlin Mullen, author of Please See Us

“At turns tender and blistering, Exposure is a gripping story about youth, race, ambition, friendship and love, cut through with the sharp knife of grief. A story of artists in the making as well as the slippery nature of truth and memory, Exposure reveals 'how more than one thing can be true in the same breath.' Masterful.”
—Daisy Alpert Florin, author of My Last Innocent Year

“In Exposure, Dellaira explores challenging topics with a deft and unflinching gaze. The writing is sensuous, the settings sing, and the characters are complex and devastatingly real. Exposure examines grief, love, creativity, and truth, exploring the nuances and paradoxes that exist in each. A timely and profound novel.”
—Katie Bishop, author of The Girls of Summer

“Dellaira explores gender and racial power dynamics in her gripping debut . . . Readers of Celeste Ng should take note.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Creatively crafted and will captivate readers . . . Dellaira’s penetrating exploration of loss, race, artistic ambition, and truth and the complex views shared by various perspectives make for a promising adult debut.”
—Booklist

From the Publisher