CONTACT: Michelle Bonanno, Publicist

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company

617.351.3832 phone

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Michelle.bonanno@hmhpub.com

“THE GENEROSITY OF WOMEN is wonderful, dramatic, comic, deeply felt and possessed of a beauty that is both quotidian and rare.”
—Mary Gaitskill, author of Veronica

“Courtney Eldridge is one of the most interesting young writers I’ve read in years. THE GENEROSITY OF WOMEN is a lovely and difficult book that rewards its readers page after page. A stunning novel.”– Frederick Barthelme, author of Elroy Nights

A novel written from the viewpoints of six dynamic women connected by love, betrayal, and life. 

Structurally inventive, sharply witty, and fiercely powerful, Eldridge’s novel—available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on June 2—is set in New York and told from the first-person perspective of six very different women (from a foul-mouthed, wildly successful gallery owner to a troubled aspiring model to a gynecologist who’s driven, poised, and in control…or so she thinks). They reveal themselves—and eventually, the breathtaking effects their choices have had on each others’ lives—over the course of five pivotal days, starting one Thursday in November of 2006.

Inside THE GENEROSITY OF WOMEN, you’ll meet:

Joyce, the feisty curator of a controversial art exhibit on surveillance, who unexpectedly finds herself under surveillance…in her own bedroom.

Bobbie, Joyce’s best friend and a gynecologist who finally finds love at 50-something and watches as the life she has so carefully built crumbles before her.

Lisa, a patient of Bobby and a former juvenile offender who is struggling with her new identity as a banker’s wife and doting mother.

Lynne, Lisa’s sister and middle-aged suburban mother who fights to keep up the perfect-family façade and strives to exact revenge for a childhood injustice.

Jordan, Lynne’s 16-year-old daughter who no longer fits in at school despite her former popularity and finds a companion in her thirty-year-old male boss.

And, finally,

Adela, Bobbie’s stunningly beautiful daughter who has returned from New York for a long weekend to meet her mother’s new boyfriend, but has a bomb of her own to drop.

As these women confront love, betrayal, secrecy, abortion, power, and profound friendship, they remain so remarkably accessible that the reader has no choice but to relate to everything from minor nuances to life-altering decisions.

Eldridge’s novel is the smartest, rawest, and most engaging piece of “women’s fiction” around, and, staying true to voice and attitude, Eldridge throws structure to the wind so the reader truly traipses inside the minds of these forceful characters.

Courtney Eldridge is the author of Unkempt, a collection of short stories and a novella. Her work has appeared in numerous literary publications, including Post Road, Bomb, A Public Space, and The Mississippi Review. She currently lives in Buenos Aires and is working on a second novel.