"Nora Lange writes with the precision of Joy Williams, and the heart of George Saunders, in a voice that is all her own.” —Daniel AlarcónAbout this Event
Event guidelines:
- Each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
- Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
- A signing will follow the talk.
- Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
- The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/8FCGcMImh4g
- As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.
If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].
From award-winning author Nora Lange comes a ransacking of the house of motherhood and matrimony.
Nora Lange’s debut novel, Us Fools, was praised as the “Great American Novel” by Molly Young in The New York Times, and “a razor-sharp critique of American capitalism” by Michael Schaub at NPR. Now, she turns her eye toward the daily exercise of getting by.
In “Heart Beats,” Carol and David arrive late to a Boston dinner party for a night of “messy socializing” with other couples, including a former cult-leader turned financial-advisor and a woman who learned of a “kinky sort of game” while riding public transit, details that she will reveal after the peach crumble. In “Island of Phaetons,” an expatriate living in Istanbul is called away from her daily life with “the husband” and “the friend who wanted more than friendship” to visit her mother, who notoriously makes bad decisions, and who has just arrived in Greece “with news” for her daughter, a tantalizing invitation that has her daughter immediately on a plane. In “Dog Star,” two figurines live out their dreams before succumbing to the truth that they have been assembled inside of a snow globe and will never go anywhere. In the title story, a new mother in Los Angeles navigates a job, a long-distance relationship with her husband, and her visiting mother, while hoping to find relief in daytime app sex.
These stories of lust, estrangement, and self-preservation are at once hilarious and savage. Day Care is a biting reflection on economic precarity, love, and peeing your pants.
Nora Lange's debut novel Us Fools was awarded the The Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, named a best book of 2024 by The Boston Globe and NPR, a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice pick. Her writing has appeared in The Believer, BOMB, Hazlitt, and elsewhere. Her project “Dailyness” was longlisted for the 2014 Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers. She has received fellowships from Brown University and is a fellow at USC’s Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities. She recently moved to Salt Lake City with her family. Her story collection, Day Care, is out with Two Dollar Radio, April 2026.
Molly Young writes for The New York Times Magazine. She is the author of Privacy.
Event Venue
Books Are Magic Smith, 225 Smith Street, Brooklyn, United States
USD 10.89 to USD 20.63
