All the Things We Don't Talk About

by Amy Feltman

Overview

A “big-hearted, lively, and expansive portrait of a family” that follows a neurodivergent father, his nonbinary teenager, and the sudden, catastrophic reappearance of the woman who abandoned them (Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author).

Morgan Flowers just wants to hide. Raised by their neurodivergent father, Morgan has grown up haunted by the absence of their mysterious mother Zoe, especially now, as they navigate their gender identity and the turmoil of first love. Their father Julian has raised Morgan with care, but he can’t quite fill the gap left by the dazzling and destructive Zoe, who fled to Europe on Morgan’s first birthday. And when Zoe is dumped by her girlfriend Brigid, she suddenly comes crashing back into Morgan and Julian’s lives, poised to disrupt the fragile peace they have so carefully cultivated.

Through it all, Julian and Brigid have become unlikely pen-pals and friends, united by the knowledge of what it’s like to love and lose Zoe; they both know that she hasn’t changed. Despite the red flags, Morgan is swiftly drawn into Zoe’s glittering orbit and into a series of harmful missteps, and Brigid may be the only link that can pull them back from the edge. A story of betrayal and trauma alongside queer love and resilience, ALL THE THINGS WE DON’T TALK ABOUT is a celebration of and a reckoning with the power and unintentional pain of a thoroughly modern family.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538704721
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	05/24/2022
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Amy Feltman graduated with an M.F.A. in Fiction from Columbia University in 2016 and is Assistant Director of Advertising at Poets & Writers Magazine. She is the author of Willa & Hesper, which was long-listed for the National Jewish Book Awards' Goldberg Prize for Debut Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, The Believer Logger, The Toast, The Millions, The Rumpus, Lilith Magazine, Slice Magazine, and elsewhere. She lives with her partner in Astoria, NY.

Editorial Reviews

03/28/2022

Feltman (Willa & Hesper) crafts a nuanced portrait of a nonbinary teen’s coming-of-age amid intense family dynamics. Growing up just north of New York City, 17-year-old Morgan is trying to navigate gender identity and their first romance without much of a road map. Morgan’s father, Julian, is neurodivergent, and their mother, Zoe, has been largely absent from their life after fleeing to Europe on their first birthday. Then, following a breakup with her longtime partner, Brigid, Zoe spectacularly crashes back onto the scene, trailing chaos in her wake and promising glamour and adventure, but only succeeding in undermining Morgan’s fragile sense of trust. Julian and Morgan’s relationship, meanwhile, is portrayed thoughtfully and, at times, poignantly, such as their work together on a 5,000-piece puzzle and their shared PB&Js. Morgan is authentically awkward in their exploration of gender expression, such as a scene in an airport (“They stood in front of the two bathroom choices and, defeated, went into the choice that meant they were invisible”). Not all of this works; a thread involving social media doxing nearly tips into unbelievability, and Zoe and Brigid’s outsize but murky wealth too frequently advances the plot. In the end, though, Feltman brings empathy and moments of grace to her characters. This is worth a look. Agent: Stephanie Delman,Trellis Literary Management. (May)

Publishers Weekly

2022-03-02
A mother’s sudden return forces the lives of a father and child into turmoil.

Morgan Flowers, who’s nonbinary, is used to being their neurodivergent father Julian’s emotional caretaker. What Morgan isn’t used to is putting their own wants and needs first. Enter Sadie Gardner, a fellow scholarship student at Morgan’s elite private school, who, much to Morgan’s shock, finds Morgan desirable. Things seem to be going well for Morgan until their mother, Zoe, who struggles with addiction and had taken off years before, comes tearing back into their life like a tornado, showing up unexpectedly at their front door. Thus the careful equilibrium Morgan has worked so hard to maintain comes crashing down: “You need to leave right now, Dad repeated once Morgan rushed him inside. You need to leave right now, Dad repeated while Morgan unzipped his coat and untied his shoes and helped him upstairs and gathered the weighted blanket and laid him down on the bed.” On top of Zoe’s sudden return, Morgan also finds themselves dealing with a blossoming friendship with an internet stranger who thinks they are someone else, the lingering loss of Morgan’s grandmother, whose cardigan still sits on the back of a chair in the house, and a father whose desperate internal desire to love and protect Morgan is followed up with little action. While Feltman’s narrative is, at times, clouded by too much attention given to the lives of secondary and tertiary characters, the complex relationship between Morgan and Julian places this novel solidly in the category of worthwhile reads.

A multidimensional family drama.

Kirkus Reviews

"Your typical modern family drama has NOTHING on this big-hearted novel."—Cosmopolitan

"This coming-of-age story is achingly tender and will remind readers of any age what it's like to be a teen who wears their heart on the outside."—Good Housekeeping

"All the Things We Don't Talk About is big-hearted, humane, and governed by a keen emotional intelligence; Feltman has deftly drawn a lively and expansive portrait of a family that I grew to love and was sad to leave. "—Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had

"As contemporary and surprising as it is acutely felt, Amy Feltman's All The Things We Don't Talk About explores all the ways we get in our own way as we try and fail and try again to care for one another, how love that's flawed can still be fierce and true, worth fighting for."—Lynn Steger Strong, author of Want

“Serving up nuance, ambivalence, texture, and joy with a splash of humor, All the Things We Don't Talk About is the queer domestic novel of my dreams. It's all here—the ways families are evolving and must evolve into our increasingly liberated and uncertain future, deep examinations of class privilege, and deeply moving characters.”—Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of The Third Rainbow Girl

"All the Things We Don’t Talk About is a deeply moving, intimate family saga, and one of those rare novels that is attuned to the smallest shifts within each character. Amy Feltman is a master storyteller and keeps us on our toes until the very end."—Sanaë Lemoine, author of The Margot Affair

"[A] nuanced portrait of a nonbinary teen’s coming-of-age amid intense family dynamics. . . Feltman brings empathy and moments of grace to her characters. This is worth a look."—Publishers Weekly

"[T]he complex relationship between Morgan and Julian places this novel solidly in the category of worthwhile reads. . . A multidimensional family drama."—Kirkus Reviews

"Feltman’s writing succeeds in depicting each of these characters with nuance and grace. . . [R]eaders are sure to find characters to root for and identify with."

—Booklist

“Original and layered, this evocatively modern story centers a nonbinary teen, their neurodivergent father and the woman who abandoned them both, who unexpectedly returns out of the blue.”—Ms. Magazine

"Following her 2019 debut novel, Willa & Hesper, a carefully wrought story about two young women falling in love, Amy Feltman’s All the Things We Don’t Talk About is a book fans have been anxiously waiting for. And one that will likely win Feltman some new ones."—Xtra Magazine

“Are you tired of cookie-cutter family dramas? You don’t have to worry about that with All The Things We Don’t Talk About. . . Feltman’s portrait of complex familial relationships is deeply absorbing and emblematic of the complicated nature of love.”—Buzzfeed

PRAISE FOR WILLA & HESPER

"A debut novel for those who loved Everything is Illuminated but updated with a queer-young-romance- twist. The title characters in Amy Feltman's Willa & Hesper find solace from their breakup in the rabbit holes of their European Jewish background."—New York Times Book Review

"A haunting story of aching love and grief, desire and hope. . . Willa & Hesper, is the story of such a love, and so, of course, it is also the story of heartbreak and longing, searches for identity, struggles to make sense of the world and of each other."—Nylon

"After crystallizing in the thrill of a new relationship, Feltman adeptly captures each progression of the stages of heartbreak. This is a cathartic break-up read if there ever was one."—Refinery29

"Willa & Hesper is a novel with a beating heart, a love story that is also an intricate love affair with time, history, religion and inheritance. In fresh and captivating prose, and spanning three vibrantly-rendered countries, Amy Feltman's debut enthralled me."—Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists

"This debut is tender and tough, startlingly intimate, yet attuned to the larger troubles of our current political moment. A moving portrait of two young women, reckoning with themselves and their world, in hopes of finding their way back to one another."—Naima Coster, New York Times bestselling author of What's Mine and Yours

From the Publisher

Narrator Sagan Chen deftly handles numerous points of view in this poignant family drama about making mistakes, owning up to them, healing, and making amends. The audiobook charts the intertwined lives of a collection of imperfect characters who are striving for connection: nonbinary teen Morgan; their autistic father, Julian; their alcoholic mother, Zoe; and Zoe’s on-again-off-again girlfriend, Brigid. Chen captures all of Morgan’s teenage bluster, passion, and confusion. Their interpretation of Julian conveys both his love for his child and the coping mechanisms he uses to get through his days. Zoe’s slurred speech and self-absorbed tantrums are all too believable. Chen’s nuanced shifts in diction and subtle changes in pacing and tone suit the quiet nature of this character-driven novel. L.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2022 - AudioFile

Narrator Sagan Chen deftly handles numerous points of view in this poignant family drama about making mistakes, owning up to them, healing, and making amends. The audiobook charts the intertwined lives of a collection of imperfect characters who are striving for connection: nonbinary teen Morgan; their autistic father, Julian; their alcoholic mother, Zoe; and Zoe’s on-again-off-again girlfriend, Brigid. Chen captures all of Morgan’s teenage bluster, passion, and confusion. Their interpretation of Julian conveys both his love for his child and the coping mechanisms he uses to get through his days. Zoe’s slurred speech and self-absorbed tantrums are all too believable. Chen’s nuanced shifts in diction and subtle changes in pacing and tone suit the quiet nature of this character-driven novel. L.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2022 - AudioFile