Pretend We Are Lovely: A Novel

An Oprah Magazine Editors' Pick and Publishers Weekly Best of the Season


It’s the summer of 1982 in Blacksburg, Virginia—seven years after the suspicious death of a son and sibling—and the Sobel family is hungry.

Francie dresses in tennis skirts and ankle socks and weighs her grams of allotted carrots and iceberg lettuce. Her semi-estranged husband Tate prefers a packed fridge and hidden doughnuts. Daughters Enid, ten, and Vivvy, almost thirteen, are subtler versions of their parents, mea...