Genre Fiction
![Dan Kois - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_dan_kois.jpg)
Vintage Contemporaries: A Novel
"Vintage Contemporaries is about being young and becoming less young, exploring friendship (sometimes magical, sometimes messy), parenthood (ditto), and how to reconcile youthful ambition and ideals with real life. It's a warm and big-hearted coming of age story that made me wistful for my own twenties, set in a vividly rendered and long-vanished New York City."-Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind
Slate editor Dan Kois makes his fiction debut with this stunning coming-of-age novel set in New York City, about the joys of unexpected life-altering friendships, the power of finding ourselves in the moment, and the importance of forgiving ourselves when we inevitably mess everything up.
It's 1991. Em moved to New York City for excitement and possibility, but the big city isn't quite what she thought it would be. Working as a literary agent's assistant, she's down to her last nineteen dollars but has made two close friends: Emily, a firebrand theater director living in a Lower East Side squat, and Lucy, a middle-aged novelist and single mom. Em's life revolves around these two wildly different women and their vividly disparate yet equally assured views of art and the world. But who is Em, and what does she want to become?
It's 2004. Em is now Emily, a successful book editor, happily married and barely coping with the challenges of a new baby. And suddenly Lucy and Emily return to her life: Her old friend Lucy's posthumous book needs a publisher, and her ex-friend Emily wants to rekindle their relationship. As they did once before, these two women-one dead, one very alive-force Emily to reckon with her decisions, her failures, and what kind of creative life she wants to lead.
A sharp, reflective, and funny story of a young woman coming into herself and struggling to find her place, Vintage Contemporaries is a novel about art, parenthood, loyalty, and fighting for a cause-the times we do the right thing, and the times we fail-set in New York City on both sides of the millennium.
Slate editor Dan Kois makes his fiction debut with this stunning coming-of-age novel set in New York City, about the joys of unexpected life-altering friendships, the power of finding ourselves in the moment, and the importance of forgiving ourselves when we inevitably mess everything up.
It's 1991. Em moved to New York City for excitement and possibility, but the big city isn't quite what she thought it would be. Working as a literary agent's assistant, she's down to her last nineteen dollars but has made two close friends: Emily, a firebrand theater director living in a Lower East Side squat, and Lucy, a middle-aged novelist and single mom. Em's life revolves around these two wildly different women and their vividly disparate yet equally assured views of art and the world. But who is Em, and what does she want to become?
It's 2004. Em is now Emily, a successful book editor, happily married and barely coping with the challenges of a new baby. And suddenly Lucy and Emily return to her life: Her old friend Lucy's posthumous book needs a publisher, and her ex-friend Emily wants to rekindle their relationship. As they did once before, these two women-one dead, one very alive-force Emily to reckon with her decisions, her failures, and what kind of creative life she wants to lead.
A sharp, reflective, and funny story of a young woman coming into herself and struggling to find her place, Vintage Contemporaries is a novel about art, parenthood, loyalty, and fighting for a cause-the times we do the right thing, and the times we fail-set in New York City on both sides of the millennium.
Editorial Reviews
"Vintage Contemporaries is about being young and becoming less young, exploring friendship (sometimes magical, sometimes messy), parenthood (ditto), and how to reconcile youthful ambition and ideals with real life. It's a warm and big-hearted coming of age story that made me wistful for my own twenties, set in a vividly rendered and long-vanished New York City." - Rumaan Alam, bestselling author of Leave the World Behind
"Vintage Contemporaries is about many things-art, friendship, youth, desire, a very particular slice of New York City-but what makes this masterful debut sing is Dan Kois's dazzling excavation of the human heart and all its contradictions, mystery, and beauty. Smart, laugh-out-loud funny and consistently surprising, this novel is a gem." - Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of The Nest and Good Company
"Vintage Contemporaries is an elegant and tender exploration of friendship, the passage of time, and what we lose and gain in the process of becoming ourselves. Part elegiac, part mindful of what nostalgia can obscure about the past, Dan Kois's novel provides precise insight into the defining moments of youth and adulthood, and finds grace and abundant possibility in both." - Danielle Evans, author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self and The Office of Historical Corrections
"A delightful, funny novel that asks the question, Is writing about happiness an important thing to do?-while doing exactly that, so beautifully and convincingly that it's like a magic trick." - Maile Meloy, author of Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It and Do Not Become Alarmed
"What a warm and delightful novel about friendship, responsibility, ambition, and legacy. Poignant without being treacly, Vintage Contemporaries is a time capsule of the recent past, and a wry and tender wo...
"Vintage Contemporaries is about many things-art, friendship, youth, desire, a very particular slice of New York City-but what makes this masterful debut sing is Dan Kois's dazzling excavation of the human heart and all its contradictions, mystery, and beauty. Smart, laugh-out-loud funny and consistently surprising, this novel is a gem." - Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of The Nest and Good Company
"Vintage Contemporaries is an elegant and tender exploration of friendship, the passage of time, and what we lose and gain in the process of becoming ourselves. Part elegiac, part mindful of what nostalgia can obscure about the past, Dan Kois's novel provides precise insight into the defining moments of youth and adulthood, and finds grace and abundant possibility in both." - Danielle Evans, author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self and The Office of Historical Corrections
"A delightful, funny novel that asks the question, Is writing about happiness an important thing to do?-while doing exactly that, so beautifully and convincingly that it's like a magic trick." - Maile Meloy, author of Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It and Do Not Become Alarmed
"What a warm and delightful novel about friendship, responsibility, ambition, and legacy. Poignant without being treacly, Vintage Contemporaries is a time capsule of the recent past, and a wry and tender wo...
