NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF FALL 2021 BY:
NEW YORK TIMES ● VULTURE ● BOSTON GLOBE ● OPRAH DAILY
SHEREADS ● KIRKUS REVIEWS ● HEY ALMA ● LITHUB ● AND MORE
“Reveals on every page how love can persevere and take shape over time and space.”—Boston Globe
“One of the most inventive and talented stylists of her generation.” —Vulture
From the award-winning author of Land of Love and Drowning, an electric new novel that maps the emotional inheritance of one couple newly in love.
When Fly and Stela meet in 21st Century New York City, it seems like fate. He's a Black American musician from a mixed-religious background who knows all about heartbreak. She’s a Catholic science teacher from the Caribbean, looking for lasting love. But are they meant to be? The answer goes back decades—all the way to their parents' earliest loves.
Vibrant and emotionally riveting, Monster in the Middle moves across decades, from the U.S. to the Virgin Islands to Ghana and back again, to show how one couple's romance is intrinsically influenced by the family lore and love stories that preceded their own pairing. What challenges and traumas must this new couple inherit, what hopes and ambitions will keep them moving forward? Exploring desire and identity, religion and class, passion and obligation, the novel posits that in order to answer the question “who are we meant to be with?” we must first understand who we are and how we came to be.
Genre: Literary Fiction
NEW YORK TIMES ● VULTURE ● BOSTON GLOBE ● OPRAH DAILY
SHEREADS ● KIRKUS REVIEWS ● HEY ALMA ● LITHUB ● AND MORE
“Reveals on every page how love can persevere and take shape over time and space.”—Boston Globe
“One of the most inventive and talented stylists of her generation.” —Vulture
From the award-winning author of Land of Love and Drowning, an electric new novel that maps the emotional inheritance of one couple newly in love.
When Fly and Stela meet in 21st Century New York City, it seems like fate. He's a Black American musician from a mixed-religious background who knows all about heartbreak. She’s a Catholic science teacher from the Caribbean, looking for lasting love. But are they meant to be? The answer goes back decades—all the way to their parents' earliest loves.
Vibrant and emotionally riveting, Monster in the Middle moves across decades, from the U.S. to the Virgin Islands to Ghana and back again, to show how one couple's romance is intrinsically influenced by the family lore and love stories that preceded their own pairing. What challenges and traumas must this new couple inherit, what hopes and ambitions will keep them moving forward? Exploring desire and identity, religion and class, passion and obligation, the novel posits that in order to answer the question “who are we meant to be with?” we must first understand who we are and how we came to be.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Tiphanie Yanique is one of our very best writers. This book is another marvel, expertly mixing voices and styles, even structures and traditions, to capture the way lives naturally flow together and apart over time. . .Monster in the Middle is a book to study and savor." - Matthew Salesses
"A total wonder. Utterly original and structurally thrilling. I am in awe of this novel and Tiphanie Yanique's masterful storytelling. This feels like a modern fable, a contemporary folk ballad full of unforgettable characters who, by the end, felt as familiar to me as family. What a gorgeous ode to love and its power." - Brandon Taylor
"Monster in the Middle is as boundless as it is affecting. Yanique's prose leaps with possibility, as her characters live and laugh and fight and love. Yanique captures romance from its peaks to its craters, deftly weaving whole worlds from everything in between." - Bryan Washington
"A total wonder. Utterly original and structurally thrilling. I am in awe of this novel and Tiphanie Yanique's masterful storytelling. This feels like a modern fable, a contemporary folk ballad full of unforgettable characters who, by the end, felt as familiar to me as family. What a gorgeous ode to love and its power." - Brandon Taylor
"Monster in the Middle is as boundless as it is affecting. Yanique's prose leaps with possibility, as her characters live and laugh and fight and love. Yanique captures romance from its peaks to its craters, deftly weaving whole worlds from everything in between." - Bryan Washington
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