How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz

How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE · A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK · REVIEWED ON THE FRONT COVER

From GMA BOOK CLUB PICK and WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST Angie Cruz, author of Dominicana, an electrifying new novel about a woman who has lost everything but the chance to finally tell her story

"Will have you LAUGHING line after line...Cruz AIMS FOR THE HEART, and fires." --Los Angeles Times

"An endearing portrait of a FIERCE, FUNNY woman." --The Washington Post

Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life. Over the course of twelve sessions, Cara recounts her tempestuous love affairs, her alternately biting and loving relationships with her neighbor Lulu and her sister Angela, her struggles with debt, gentrification and loss, and, eventually, what really happened between her and her estranged son, Fernando. As Cara confronts her darkest secrets and regrets, we see a woman buffeted by life but still full of fight.

Structurally inventive and emotionally kaleidoscopic, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water is Angie Cruz's most ambitious and moving novel yet, and Cara is a heroine for the ages.

Angie Cruz is the author of the novels Soledad and Let It Rain Coffee, which was a IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize nominee in 2007. She has won fellowships from the New York Foundation of the Arts, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, VQR, Gulf Coast Literary Quarterly, and other journals. She is an associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and the founder and editor in chief of Aster(ix), a literary and arts publication.