Alice Sadie Celine

by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright Narrated by Chloë Sevigny

Overview

“Obsessed!” -Chloë Sevigny
“I am literally obsessed.” -Busy Philipps

Hailed as “richly intimate” and “wickedly delightful” (The New York Times Book Review), this steamy and incisive debut adult novel follows one woman's affair with her daughter's best friend, testing the limits of love and ambition.

It's opening night, but Alice's performance in the local Bay Area production of The Winter's Tale is far from glamorous. She doesn't have dreams of stardom, but the basement theater in a wildfire-choked town isn't exactly what she envisioned for her career back home in Los Angeles. To make matters worse, her best friend Sadie is not even coming.

Pragmatic, serious Sadie and flighty, creative Alice have been best friends since high school-really one another's only friends-but now that they are through with college (which they attended together) and living on opposite ends of California, Alice would at least expect her friend's support. Sadie, determined not to cancel her plans with her boyfriend, ends up enlisting the help of her mother, Celine.

A professor of women's and gender studies at UC Berkeley, Celine's landmark treatise on sex and identity made her notorious, but she's struggling to write her new book in a post-second-wave feminist world. So, when Sadie begs her to attend Alice's play, she relents, if only to escape writer's block. But in a turn of perplexing events, Celine becomes entranced by Alice's performance and realizes that her daughter's once lanky, slightly annoying best friend is now an irresistible young woman.

Set over the course of decades-from Alice and Sadie's early friendship days and Celine's decision to leave her husband to the radical movements of 1990s Berkeley and navigating contemporary Hollywood-Alice and Celine's affair will test the limits of their love for Sadie and their own beliefs of power, agency, and feminism. Witty and relatable, sexy and surprising, Sarah Blakley-Cartwright's debut adult novel is a mesmerizing portrait of the inner lives of three very different women.

Editorial Reviews

author of The Stars Are Not Yet Bells Hannah Lillith Assadi

Alice Sadie Celine is the story of a forbidden love triangle, of the complexities of female friendship, and of the inextricable bond between mothers and daughters. Taut, tense, sexy, and lucid…[an] irresistible, daring page-turner."

author of Virtue Hermione Hoby

Smart, slyly sexy, and crackling throughout with kindhearted humor.”

Town & Country Magazine

[A] keenly observed take on friendship and fulfillment and what it means to start thinking of parents as actual people.”

New York Times bestselling author Busy Philipps

I am literally obsessed.”

From the Publisher

Obsessed! Each sentence of Alice Sadie Celine is chock full of playful irreverence for feminist and gender theory, hip popular culture references, and the wide breadth of what defines female sexuality.” —Chloë Sevigny

“Here come three indelible women and, with them, one of contemporary fiction’s most delicious love triangles. Sarah Blakley-Cartwright has written a gem of a novel – super smart, slyly sexy, and crackling throughout with kindhearted humor.” —Hermione Hoby, author of Virtue

“I am literally obsessed.” —Busy Philipps

“Like Didion but with more warmth and a queer sensibility, Alice Sadie Celine is packed with so much of what I love in a book: tight prose, smart, fully realized characters grappling with inappropriate love affairs, and bright California land and light. It's extraordinarily lovely and I savored every word and didn’t want it to end.” —Bethany Ball, author of The Pessimists

JANUARY 2024 - AudioFile

It takes an incredibly skilled narrator to make character vignettes entrancing, and performer Chloë Sevigny more than achieves this. Alice is struggling through her young career as an actress working at a dwindling local theater. After her best friend Sadie's mother, Celine, attends the play, Celine and Alice enter into a controversial sexual relationship. Meanwhile, Sadie is trying to mend her own sexual hang-ups and strained relationships. In this bold story, Sevigny dissects each of the women's deepest secrets and exposes them all as vulnerable characters. Despite this, Sevigny also uncovers the beauty within a flawed life and the redemption in making the right choices. Her voluptuous narration is raw, honest, and best for listeners who are craving a challenging listening experience. G.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940178046999
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	11/28/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,027,056

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