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The Unsettled
- Author
- Ayana Mathis
- Narrator
- Bahni Turpin
- Publisher
- Cornerstone
- Publish Date
- 4 April 2024
- Run Time
- 11 hours 26 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
From the moment Ava Carson and her ten-year-old son, Toussaint, arrive at the Glenn Avenue family shelter in Philadelphia in 1985, Ava is already plotting a way out. Estranged from her own mother, Dutchess, and their home in Bonaparte, Alabama, Ava is determined to give her son
the chance of a better life.
But when Toussaint’s father, Cass, reappears, Ava is swept off course by his charisma and his bold vision for racial justice. As Ava becomes more enmeshed with Cass and the radical group he has created, Toussaint begins to sense the danger and threat of violence simmering all around him. He begins to dream of Dutchess and Bonaparte, his home and birthright, but can he find his way there?
The Unsettled is an explosive and vital story of belonging, legacy and survival from one of America’s most talented storytellers.
‘[A] powerful book’ Marilynne Robinson
‘A book to be read and re-read’ Jesmyn Ward
‘Poetic and fierce’ Yiyun Li
©2024 Ayana Mathis (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Critics Review
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Deep, rich and huge spirited
Paul Harding
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Shelter without the grace of welcome is exposure to the worst coldness of the world. Loyalty and the offer of comfort satisfy needs we feel in our bones. In The Unsettled, Ayana Mathis brings these extremes of experience intensely to life. This is a fine, powerful book
Marilynne Robinson
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Ayana Mathis is one of the most brilliant writers working in today's America. A tour de force, The Unsettled is a poetic and fierce study of the conflicts between circumstances and personalities, between dreams and survivals, between the indifference of the world at large and the passions of individuals
Yiyun Li
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The Unsettled crosses generations and landscapes, digs in the Southern soil and walks mean Northern city streets. Expansive and explosive, this beauty of a novel showcases Ayana Mathis's grace on the page, as writer, as storyteller. A book to be read and re-read
Jesmyn Ward
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Poignant, heartbreaking . . . Mathis skillfully and subtly drops allusions to historical events, sending the reader on a kind of intellectual treasure hunt
The New York Times Book Review
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The Unsettled follows Ms. Mathis’s debut, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, whose loosely assembled family vignettes also explored the ambivalent aftermath of the Great Migration north. But this is a far better book, more focused and cohesive, and also more alive
The Wall Street Journal
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The Unsettled is a powerful, moving novel about the fracture of Black family and the attempts we make to suture it, about the power of our history and futile attempts to sanitize it, about the connection of Black people to the lands they fight so hard to keep, and the government’s attempts to separate them from it
Roxane Gay
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Mathis is back with a highly anticipated and emotionally propulsive follow-up . . . Through a chorus of distinctive and virtuosic voices, we gather the story of a mother, a daughter, and the land that both unites and divides them
Oprah Daily
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Ayana Mathis
- Narrator
- Bahni Turpin
- Duration
- 11 hours 26 minutes
- Release Date
- 4 April 2024
- ISBN
- 9781804944813
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Cornerstone
- Genre
- Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary, Narrative theme: Identity / belonging, Family life fiction
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin.From the moment Ava Carson and her ten-year-old son, Toussaint, arrive at the Glenn Avenue family shelter in Philadelphia in 1985, Ava is already plotting a way out. Estranged from her own mother, Dutchess, and their home in Bonaparte, Alabama, Ava is determined to give her sonthe chance of a better life.But when Toussaint’s father, Cass, reappears, Ava is swept off course by his charisma and his bold vision for racial justice. As Ava becomes more enmeshed with Cass and the radical group he has created, Toussaint begins to sense the danger and threat of violence simmering all around him. He begins to dream of Dutchess and Bonaparte, his home and birthright, but can he find his way there?The Unsettled is an explosive and vital story of belonging, legacy and survival from one of America’s most talented storytellers.‘[A] powerful book’ Marilynne Robinson‘A book to be read and re-read’ Jesmyn Ward‘Poetic and fierce’ Yiyun Li©2024 Ayana Mathis (P)2024 Penguin Audio
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