DESCRIPTION

Write this down: Cara Romero wants to work.

Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life. Over the course of twelve sessions, Cara recounts her tempestuous love affairs, her alternately biting and loving relationships with her neighbor Lulu and her sister Angela, her struggles with debt, gentrification and loss, and, eventually, what really happened between her and her estranged son, Fernando. As Cara confronts her darkest secrets and regrets, we see a woman buffeted by life but still full of fight.

Structurally inventive and emotionally kaleidoscopic, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water is Angie Cruz's most ambitious and moving novel yet, and Cara is a heroine for the ages.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Angie Cruz is the author of the novels Soledad, Let It Rain Coffee, and Dominicana, which was shortlisted for the Women's Prize and a Good Morning America Book Club pick. She is founder and editor in chief of Aster(ix), a literary and arts journal, and is an associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK (The Washington Post, The TODAY Show, Real Simple, The Millions, LitHub, PopSugar, Ms. Magazine, and more)

"One of my FAVORITE BOOKS I have read in years." --Quiara Alegria Hudes, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter of In the Heights

An endearing portrait of a FIERCE, FUNNY woman. --The Washington Post

“Taut and poignant…Luckily for us, Cara is an oversharer…drawing us in with her magnetic storytelling and breezy self-confidence…In projecting Cara’s voice, Cruz prioritizes the importance of seeing an individual’s humanity even within the most impersonal of systems…Like the novel itself, Cara resists classification. More than a job, or a cure, she requires a patient audience with whom she can share her most intimate secrets.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water will have you laughing line after line, even when you wonder if you should be. (The answer is always yes!) By the time her sessions are up, though, you’ll feel like many of those who know Ms. Romero; that her incessant chatter has become as life-sustaining as the substance she can’t stop drinking…Cruz never misses. Her new novel aims for the heart, and fires.”
—Los Angeles Times