Brass
Xhenet Aliu, 2018
Random House
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399590245
Summary
A waitress at the Betsy Ross Diner, Elsie hopes her nickel-and-dime tips will add up to a new life.
Then she meets Bashkim, who is at once both worldly and naïve, a married man who left Albania to chase his dreams—and wound up working as a line cook in Waterbury, Connecticut.
Back when the brass mills were still open, this bustling factory town drew one wave of immigrants after another. Now it’s the place they can’t seem to leave.
Elsie, herself the granddaughter of Lithuanian immigrants, falls in love quickly, but when she learns that she’s pregnant, Elsie can’t help wondering where Bashkim’s heart really lies, and what he’ll do about the wife he left behind.
Seventeen years later, headstrong and independent Luljeta receives a rejection letter from NYU and her first-ever suspension from school on the same day. Instead of striking out on her own in Manhattan, she’s stuck in Connecticut with her mother, Elsie—a fate she refuses to accept.
Wondering if the key to her future is unlocking the secrets of the past, Lulu decides to find out what exactly her mother has been hiding about the father she never knew. As she soon discovers, the truth is closer than she ever imagined.
Told in equally gripping parallel narratives with biting wit and grace, Brass announces a fearless new voice with a timely, tender, and quintessentially American story. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1978-79
• Where—Waterbury, Connecticut, USA
• Education—M.F.A., University of North Carolina; M.L.I.S., University of Alabama
• Awards—Prairie Schooner Book Prize-Fiction
• Currently—lives in Athens, Georgia
Xhenet Aliu’s debut novel, Brass, was published in 2018. Her short fiction collection, Domesticated Wild Things, and Other Stories, published in 2013, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction. Aliu's stories and essays have appeared in Glimmer Train, Barcelona Review, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere.
A native of Waterbury, Connecticut, Aliu was born to an Albanian father and a Lithuanian American mother. She holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and an MLIS from The University of Alabama and now lives in Athens, Georgia, where she works as an academic librarian. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
For Elsie and Lulu, the mother and daughter at the center of the book, the most valuable thing in Waterbury is a ticket out.…The plot advances through each woman's story; as the symmetries between them pile up, along with misunderstandings, the novel accumulates momentum and emotional power…They'll never see each other, or themselves, as clearly as the reader gets to see them both—that's the magic trick here. In granting the reader access to both women's interiority, Aliu brings to life the simple, heartbreaking fact that though our stories can intersect, we're ourselves alone…From its opening page, Brass simmers with anger—the all too real byproduct of working hard for not enough, of being a woman in a place where women have little value, of getting knocked down one too many times. But when the simmer breaks into a boil, Aliu alchemizes that anger into love, and in doing so creates one of the most potent dramatizations of the bond between mother and daughter that I've ever read.
Julie Buntin - New York Times Book Review
An exceptional debut novel, one that plumbs the notion of the American Dream while escaping the clichés that pursuit almost always brings with it.… [Xhenet] Aliu delivers a living, breathing portrait of places left behind.
Eugenia Williamson - Boston Globe
The writing blazes on the page.… The narrative is also incredibly funny, sly, and always popping with personality.… So much about the book is also extraordinarily timely, especially when it focuses on class and culture, and what they really mean.… Yes, we might be lost from who and what we really are. But, as this audacious novel shows, we can—and we must—keep struggling to make our own place in the world.
Carolyn Leavitt - San Francisco Chronicle
A] lyrically insightful debut novel by Xhenet Aliu, telling in sharp, pithy parallel narratives the story of a waitress in small-town Connecticut who falls in love with a charismatic Albanian immigrant and the story of her grown daughter, likewise feeling trapped in that same small town and seeking answers about her past. Aliu makes both these stories immediately touching and weaves them together in ways that are surprising without being sappy.
Christian Science Monitor
Aliu is witty and unsparing in her depiction of the town and its inhabitants, illustrating the granular realities of the struggle for class mobility.
The New Yorker
Lustrous… a tale alive with humor and gumption, of the knotty, needy bond between a mother and daughter.… [Brass] marks the arrival of a writer whose work will stand the test of time.
Oprah Magazine
Aliu juxtaposes a mother and daughter’s late teenage desperation 17 years apart in her striking first novel.… This is a captivating, moving story of drastic measures, failed schemes, and the loss of innocence.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Deftly written in a style that is evocative of time and place, this universal story of the search for home is well translated into the blue-collar world of Elsie and Lulu.
Library Journal
(Starred review) A boldly witty and astute inquiry into the nature-versus-nurture debate, the inheritance of pain, and the dream of transcendence.
Booklist
(Starred review) [G]limmering.… Aliu's riveting, sensitive work shines with warmth, clarity, and a generosity of spirit. Her… writing is polished and precise, bringing her characters glowingly to life.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
The following questions were generously offered to us by Elaine Steele, Librarian, Gales Ferry Library in Connecticut. Many thanks, Elaine:
1. Why do you think the author chose the title "Brass"?
2. Does anyone have a connection with brass factories?
3. Why do you think Luljeta’s sections are written in second person?
4. How does culture play into this story? Does anyone have any experience with Albanian or Lithuanian culture?
5. How did you feel about Bashkim’s behavior with his money? What about with his wife and Elsie?
7. Why do you think Luljeta admired her aunt Greta so much?
8. How are Elsie and Luljeta’s stories the same? Different?
0. Did you feel as if Elsie or Luljeta changed throughout the course of the novel?
10. Did the ending surprise you?
(Questions created by Elaine Steele and submitted to LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution to both. Thanks.)