Janet Fitch is most famously known as the author of the Oprah's Book Club novel White Oleander, which became a film in 2002. She is a graduate of Reed College, located in Portland, Oregon.
Janet Fitch was born in Los Angeles, a third-generation native, and grew up in a family of voracious readers. As an undergraduate at Reed College, Fitch had decided to become an historian, attracted to its powerful narratives, the scope of events, the colossal personalities, and the potency and breadth of its themes. But when she won a student exchange to Keele University in England, where her passion for Russian history led her, she awoke in the middle of the night on her twenty-first birthday with the revelation she wanted to write fiction.
The Majority (2023) Elizabeth L Silver "Surprisingly personal . . .The complexity of Sylvia's background and the personal cost of her commitment make for a thought-provoking read with many echoes of a certain departed Supreme Court Justice also known by three initials."
About the Carleton Sisters (2023) Dian Greenwood "Midlife is the grand subject of Dian Greenwood's psychologically acute novel About the Carleton Sisters, exploring the paths of three very different women coming together at a critical moment, just as they've reached the endpoint of their youth's decisions. I loved the texture of their lives, the small California agricultural town, and found myself identifying with each sister's plight, the fundamental human difficulty of releasing outworn choices in the face of an unknown future. A soulful, poignant debut."
Circa (2022) Devi S Laskar "A subtle exploration of fate and free will. Keen as a seismologist, Devi Laskar traces the reverberations of a violent accident in the life of a young American-Bengali woman from her teen years straddling cultures in suburban North Carolina through her marriage in New York City. Lyrical and defiant, a beautiful and surprising work."
Here Lies (2022) Olivia Clare Friedman "Olivia Friedman's precision, earthy humor and clear-eyed tenderness for outsiders and oddballs combine in this sparkling debut, as an isolated young woman finds unexpected connection in her search to bury her mother, an act forbidden by law in an alt-future Louisiana."
Shadows of Pecan Hollow (2022) Caroline Frost "Paper Moon meets Badlands in this mesmerizing Texas backroads thriller, a twisty story of a runaway girl who finds a home and a desperate love on the road with an opportunistic criminal, and the long comet's tail of their story. A notable debut, drenched in regional detail and told in a gritty, sensual prose."
MacArthur Park (2021) Judith Freeman "A fascinating novel built delicately on the shifting sands of interwoven destinies, MacArthur Park tells the tale of three flawed people intimately linked by love and mutual history. Judith Freeman's humanity and compassion are a marvel, as is her understanding of the deep roots of friendship and the patient unfolding of relationships."
With or Without You (2020) Caroline Leavitt "This fresh, engaging, intimate tale of love and identity subverts the reader’s expectations again and again. Caroline Leavitt refuses to take one clichéd turn. A complete original, an absolute delight."
You Again (2020) Debra Jo Immergut "So accomplished, so glorious--a complete original from page one. You may as well buy your second copy now."
The Imperfects (2020) Amy Meyerson "Delicious, compulsively readable... Both a gripping mystery and a family tale of imperfect people... Large gemstones have a certain magic of their own, and Meyerson expertly captures that fascination, in her wonderful tracing of the origin of the secret brooch. I read this book morning and night until it was done, unable to break free of its spell. A sheer delight."
142 Ostriches (2020) April Dávila "An unusual ranching tale set in the Mojave Desert, where the herd is a flock of eight foot tall birds and their wrangler a young woman raised by her gruff grandmother who dreams of another kind of life. A twisty, warmhearted story of family, community and fate, a thoroughgoing delight."
The Stranger Game (2018) Peter Gadol "'Following’ gets a whole new meaning in Peter Gadol’s stylish psychological thriller set in the future of the day-after-tomorrow. A moody, increasingly dangerous house of mirrors where the rules morph as his players become more obsessed with 'the stranger game'."
Any Man (2018) Amber Tamblyn "An explosive, shapeshifting piece of literary real estate, Amber Tamblyn’s arresting debut offers a scathing portrait of American celebrity culture and the way in which it transmutes human tragedy into a vicious circus; victims are forgotten as likes and shares swirl, and ‘news’ becomes a squalid orgy, a lurid feast. Tamblyn takes every risk in this astonishing and innovative work, and succeeds, gloriously."
The Magnificent Esme Wells (2018) Adrienne Sharp "Adrienne Sharp brilliantly recreates the tawdry magic of twin dream machines, studio-era Hollywood and early Las Vegas, in this tale of . . . the scrappy, precocious Esme Wells, her go-for-broke parents, and the toll these dreams took on their dreamers."
California (2014) Edan Lepucki "THRILLING...A VIVID, BELIEVABLE PICTURE OF A NOT-SO-DISTANT FUTURE."
Moonpies and Movie Stars (2006) Amy Wallen "With a pitch-perfect ear for comic dialogue and a fine sense of the absurd, Amy Wallen writes herself a place on the porch swing of great Southern writing."
The Memory Room (2002) Mary Rakow "The Memory Room marks the rarest of occurrences-the debut of a literary master."
(b.1955)
