The Newlyweds

From Nell Freudenberger, one of America's most dazzling talents, comes an utterly captivating cross-continental love story 
 
Amina Mazid is twenty-four when she leaves Bangladesh for Rochester, New York, and for George Stillman, the husband who met and wooed her online. It's a twenty-first-century romance that echoes ancient traditions - the arranged marriages of her home country. And though George falls for Amina because she doesn't 'play games', they will both hide a secret, and vital, part of their lives from each other. 
 
A brilliantly observed, wry and yet deeply moving novel about the exhilerations - and complications - of getting, and staying, wed, The Newlyweds is a tour de force - a novel as rich with misunderstandings as it is with unlikely connections. 
 
'Young writers as ambitious - and as good - as Nell Freudenberger give us reason for hope', New York Times Book Review 
 
'Freudenberg has rare humanity, and talent great enough to command not only a vast landscape of imbalance and misunderstanding, but also a tender sphere of tiny intimacy, hidden yearning...A marvellous book', Kiran Desai, winner of the MAN Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss 
 
Nell Freudenberger is the author of the novel The Dissident, (longlisted for the Orange Prize), The Lessons and the story collection Lucky Girls, winner of the PEN/Malamud Award and shortlisted for the Orange New Writers' Prize and a New York Times Book Review Notable Book. She was named a New Yorker '20 Under 40' writer and one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Took off like a rocket, taking me with it

A convincing and rather compelling story of a very modern marriage and a real heroine to root for

A wonderful, funny, inventive novel that takes you slowly by surprise the more you read. Highly recommended

The intrigue and small disappointments of marriage are painstakingly captured.

A Fresh and modern look at relationships, told with heart.

A charming and serious tale of marriage, family and identity. Its prose style is intimate, almost conspiratorial... threading its arm around the reader confidently. The writing is clear and spare... yet Freudenberger's investigation into what makes relationships work... is complex and sophisticated... Freudenberger approaches her subject with great sensitivity, a heavy sense of the seriousness of life - and much wry humour.

There are some piercing cultural observations... the chapters zip along with purpose and the novel flits effortlessly between the false intimacy of suburban America and the closely knit gossipy communities of Dhaka

A powerful sense of empathy, of being able to imagine what it is to be soemone else, to feel what someone else feels

Every minute I was away from this book I was longing to be back in the world she created

Ann Patchett, author of 'State of Wonder'

This classic tale of missed chances, crushing errors of judgment, and scarring sacrifices, all compounded by cultural differences, is perfectly pitched, piercingly funny, and exquisitely heartbreaking

Wise, timely, ripe with humour and complexity, The Newlyweds is one of the most believable love stories of our young century

Gary Shteyngart, author of 'Super Sad True Love Story'

Nell Freudenberger is the author of the novel The Dissident (longlisted for the Orange Prize) and the story collection Lucky Girls, winner of the PEN/Malamud Award and shortlisted for the Orange New Writers' Prize and a New York Times Book Review Notable Book. She was named a New Yorker '20 Under 40' writer and one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Amina met George online. Within months she has left her home in Bangladesh and is living in George's house in the American suburbs. Theirs is a very twenty-first century union, forged from afar yet echoing the traditions of the arranged marriage. 
 
But as Amina struggles to find her place in America, it becomes clear that neither she nor George have been entirely honest with each other. Both have brought to the marriage a secret - a vital, hidden part of themselves, which will reveal who they are and whether their future is together or an ocean apart.

Nell Freudenberger

Endlessly rich . . . It is Freudenberger's willingness to accept human contradictions here - and to lay them out with a combination of calm rigour and rueful comedy - that so triumphantly makes Lost and Wanted the real thing

Dazzling . . .[Freudenberger explores] the nature of ambition, success and grief . . . brilliant

Freudenberger has a real eye for the subtle differences in how people react to adversity, an ear for the way children talk, and an artist's clear-sighted commitment to seeing the totality of her characters

The effect is beautiful . . . Reading it, I was moved by intimacies near and far, real and imagined, lost and found in all the echoing corners of the expanding universe

This spooky mystery fuses nimbly explained science with a finely calibrated meditation on grief and paths not taken

Tender, sharply observed and marvellously rich

Are we connected? Are we alone? Freudenberger's brilliant and compassionate novel takes on the big questions of the universe and proves, again, that she is one of America's greatest writers

Andrew Sean Green, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'Less'

[A] stunning portrayal of grief . . . The integration of ideas from physics sparks in the reader new ways of thinking about the nature of time and existence as well as, on a less cosmic scale, about human relationships . . .This is a beautiful and moving novel

Dazzling . . . [Freudenberger] dramatizes, through Helen, both the dawning awareness that life doesn't always allow for second chances and the great midlife consolation prize: a greater appreciation for those chances - and people - one has been given.

With page-turning acceleration, Lost and Wanted is a piercing meditation on the immutable truths that mourning calls into question. Freudenberger [has a] gravity-defying gift

Deeply involving, substantial, suspenseful, and psychologically lush . . . With daring, zest, insight, wit, and compassion, Lost and Wanted gracefully and thrillingly bridges the divide between science and art

Before the full scope of the accomplishment has sunk in-the lucid, compassionate portraits of a wide array of characters, the meticulous hand with which Freudenberger paints their world-you'll be beguiled, as I was, by Helen's narration, so full of humble longing and deep, sweet ruefulness

Jonathan Lethem, author of 'A Gambler's Anatomy'

This tender, engaging story takes a physicist for its heroine, and boldly bends the forces of the universe to the binding love between friends, between partners, between parents and their children. It's a literary and emotional adventure peopled by complex, sympathetic characters, some of whom happen to do science as they navigate their most important relationships

Gorgeous, brainy, and passionate. Lost and Wanted is the best kind of big American novel: a majestic book that takes on nothing less than the nature of the universe-literally-while probing that similarly infinite mystery known as the human heart. Nell Freudenberger's writing is fearless and profound, as it absolutely must be in order to pull off this very modern ghost story that unfolds in the life of an MIT physicist. Freudenberger is one of our best novelists, and she's delivered a real powerhouse of a novel

Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Like the finely calibrated tools of particle physics described in its pages,NellFreudenberger's novel demonstrates an astonishing sensitivity to the forces that move us all. Her rendering of grief-with its shadings of denial, anger, longing, dark humor, and magic-is nothing short of perfection

Julie Orringer, author of 'The Invisible Bridge'

An iridescent story of friendship. Lost and Wanted is an extraordinary book, startling in its open curiosity and love

Rivka Galchen, author of 'Atmospheric Disturbances'

Intellectually dazzling and almost unbearably moving, Lost and Wanted stayed with me long after I read it, its characters still moving in my brain like free electrons. Probing the mysteries of the physical universe and the equally mysterious nature of human connection, Nell Freudenberger writes fearlessly and lyrically about physics and grief; parenthood and friendship; the subtleties of race and the seriousness of female ambition. I've read many novels that make me think and some that made me cry, but few that did both as powerfully as this one did

A great work of art treads the line between the ingenious and the improbable. This is true of Nell Freudenberger's remarkable Lost and Wanted. It somehow combines particle physics and paranormal phenomena to present a lucid, humane and wryly comic view of the way we live today. One reads the novel with pleasure and marvels at Freudenberger's courage and intelligence

David Bezmozgis, author of 'The Betrayers'

Brimming with wit and intelligence and devoted to things that matter: life, love, death, and the mysteries of the cosmos. Nell Freudenberger is good at explaining physics, but her real genius is in the depiction of relationships. Each one in the novel-whether between adults, adults and children, or among children-is unique, finely calibrated, and real. The title is a line from a poem by W.H. Auden, which doesn't fully hit until the end of the book, when it takes on heart-rending poignancy

I love novels that are obsessed with the "erotics of knowledge," books that understand how ideas are not the opposite of feelings but rather their intense distillation. A. S. Byatt's "Possession," Ann Patchett's "State of Wonder," Barbara Kingsolver's recent "Unsheltered," and Nell Freudenberger's forthcoming "Lost and Wanted" all are marvelous depictions of the direct link between the body's cravings and the passions of the mind

Freudenberger's outstanding achievement is that Lost and Wanted is also a moving story about down-to-earth issues like grief and loneliness

Helen Clapp is a physics professor. She doesn't believe in pseudo-science, or time travel and especially not in ghosts. So when she gets a missed call from Charlie, her closest friend from university with whom she hasn't spoken in over a year, Helen thinks there must be some mistake. Because Charlie died two days ago. 
 
Then when her young son, Jack, claims to have seen Charlie in their house just the other day, Helen begins to have doubts. 
 
Through the grief of the husband and daughter she left behind, Helen is drawn into the orbit of Charlie's world, slotting in the missing pieces of her friend's past. And, as she delves into the web of their shared history, Helen finds herself entangled in the forgotten threads of her own life. 
 
Lost and Wanted is a searing novel from one of America's most exciting writers about the sacred knottiness of female friendship, the forces which fuse us together and those which drive us apart.

Nell Freudenberger

Praise for Lost and Wanted

Endlessly rich . . . It is Freudenberger's willingness to accept human contradictions here - and to lay them out with a combination of calm rigour and rueful comedy - that so triumphantly makes Lost an ...

Dazzling . . .[Freudenberger explores] the nature of ambition, success and grief . . . brilliant

Freudenberger has a real eye for the subtle differences in how people react to adversity, an ear for the way children talk, and an artist's clear-sighted commitment to seeing the totality of ...

Endlessly rich . . . It is Freudenberger's willingness to accept human contradictions here - and to lay them out with a combination of calm rigour and rueful comedy - that so triumphantly makes Lost an ...

Dazzling . . .[Freudenberger explores] the nature of ambition, success and grief . . . brilliant

Freudenberger has a real eye for the subtle differences in how people react to adversity, an ear for the way children talk, and an artist's clear-sighted commitment to seeing the totality of ...

Endlessly rich . . . It is Freudenberger's willingness to accept human contradictions here - and to lay them out with a combination of calm rigour and rueful comedy - that so triumphantly makes Lost an ...

Dazzling . . .[Freudenberger explores] the nature of ambition, success and grief . . . brilliant

Freudenberger has a real eye for the subtle differences in how people react to adversity, an ear for the way children talk, and an artist's clear-sighted commitment to seeing the totality of ...

Books by Nell Freudenberger

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