Brass

October 30, 2017
Aliu juxtaposes a mother and daughter’s late teenage desperation 17 years apart in her striking first novel. In the mid-’90s, Elsie waits tables at a greasy spoon in post-industrial Waterbury, Conn. She pins her hopes for upward mobility on Bashkim, an Albanian immigrant who left his wife in the old country and funnels all his money into mysterious investments. An unplanned pregnancy forces them into uneasy cohabitation, where Elsie copes with her mother’s pessimism, the derision of the Albanian wives of Bashkim’s friends, and her partner’s alarming volatility. Aliu intersperses the story of their daughter, Luljeta, a senior in high school whose own hopes for escape from Waterbury are dashed with a rejection from NYU. As she reels, she also discovers her extended Albanian family still lives in the area and can answer questions about the father her mother claimed had died. With the help of Albanian teenager Ahmet, whose modest dreams of Panera franchises starkly contrast with Luljeta’s glamorous goals of leaving town, she sets off to finally find her father. This is a captivating, moving story of drastic measures, failed schemes, and the loss of innocence. Agent: Julie Barer, The Book Group.

This audiobook presents unsparing parallel portrayals of a mother and her daughter: Elsie, whose rocky relationship with an Albanian immigrant leads to pregnancy, and Luljeta, her daughter. Now age 17, Luljeta is struggling to come to terms with who she is after realizing she will not be able to escape her hardscrabble town of brass mills just yet. The dual narrations of Lauren Fortgang and Therese Plummer vividly depict both the down-on-its-luck town and its hardworking residents, including the Albanian immigrants who are attempting to reconcile their difficult past while forging a new life in America. Elsie's narration is more nuanced, while Luljeta's reflects her adolescent angst. Accents for the Albanian characters help to add dimension to this story of struggle and the search for belonging. S.E.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine