What keeps the pages turning is the desperate, botched attempts at familial love between family members, none of whom seem to know quite what they want, bringing to mind the Tolstoy quote, “Happy families are all alike every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Here, the mercurial rendering of this particular unhappy family makes it a heart-wrenching read in its very own way. Ellie’s instability is the narrative locus, and the portrayal of teenage addiction occasionally feels unconvincing and melodramatic, as does the puppy-dog rendering of Charles, Maya’s adoring and one-dimensional TA. Meanwhile, her brother flounders through his freshman year, and her parents drift further apart. The backdrop is New York, from Park Slope to. From then on, the chapters shift between present and past: a present where Ellie is away from home, recovering from a vaguely alluded-to tragedy, and the past, where Ellie has begun to spiral out of control toward the mistake that will unravel her and her family. Hold Still by Lynn Steger Strong tells the story of the complex relationship between a mother and daughter. “I’m fine,” her daughter says, although the reader always suspects this isn’t true. Norton/Liveright, 26.95 (320p) ISBN 978-1-63149-168-9 More By and About this Authorchevronright Featured Fiction Reviews. When Maya Taylor, an English professor with a tendency to hide in her books, sends her daughter to Florida to. 45 quotes from Lynn Steger Strong: We were just privileged enough to think that we could live outside the systems and the structures and survive it, but we failed., We are very good at desperate emails tinged with self-destruction. An English professor and overbearing mother, Maya tumbles fully-clothed into the ocean to rescue her young daughter, Ellie, from a wave in the foreshadowing first chapter. Hold Still audiobook, by Lynn Steger Strong.

She received an MFA from Columbia University and her non-fiction has been. Strong’s debut novel features some familiar elements-an unhappy academic family (in Park Slope), children flailing, one spouse emotionally distant, the other tempted by a student-but it is saved by the convincing emotional gymnastics of Maya Taylor. Her first novel, Hold Still, was released by Liveright/WW Norton in March 2016.

Hold still lynn steger strong