Take What You Need: A Novel
Idra Novey“One of the best novels I have read in years. A moving & heartbreaking book about the power of art, connection, & the complex nature of love.”—David Gutowski, Largehearted Boy
From “one of the finest & bravest novelists at work today,” (Vulture) award-winning writer Idra Novey has conjured a novel of “astonishing & singular” honesty (Rumaan Alam) with two determined, unforgettable female voices.
Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, Take What You Need traces the parallel lives of Jean & her beloved but estranged stepdaughter, Leah, who’s sought a clean break from her rural childhood. In Leah’s urban life with her young family, she’s revealed little about Jean, how much she misses her stepmother’s hard-won insights & joyful lack of inhibition. But with Jean’s death, Leah must return to sort through what’s been left behind.
What Leah discovers is staggering: Jean has filled her ramshackle house with giant sculptures she’s welded from scraps of the area’s industrial history. There’s also a young man now living in the house who played an unknown role in Jean’s last years & in her art.
With great verve & humor, Idra Novey zeros in on the joys & difficulty of family, the ease with which we let distance mute conflict, & the power we can draw from creative pursuits.
Take What You Need explores the continuing mystery of the people we love most with passionate & resonance, this novel illuminating can be built from what others have discarded—art, unexpected friendship, a new contentment of self. This is Idra Novey at her very best.
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Idra Novey is the award-winning author of the novels Ways to Disappear & Those Who Knew. Her work has been translated into 12 languages & she has written for The Atlantic, The NY Times, & the Los Angeles Times. She teaches fiction at Princeton & in the MFA Prog