Overview

A richly detailed, brilliantly woven debut about the life and lore of one Black American family, told in thirteen distinct snapshots of their family gatheringsThe children of the four Collins sisters - Cassandra, Lela, Suzette and Felice - have a complicated inheritance. It includes unbreakable rules for navigating society, contested stories about their grandparents' early lives, capacious musical talents, and an opal necklace of uncertain origin. In this sparkling debut, Shannon Sanders brings us into the company of this majestically complicated multigenerational family as they meet, bicker, celebrate, worry, keep and reveal secrets, build lives and careers, and endure.With deceptive ease, Sanders captures the nuanced performances of the most intimate and most estranged family relationships. From a pair of brothers reuniting to oust a deadbeat boyfriend from their mother's home to a quartet of nieces roped into attending a party in their aunt's honour, from unexpected visitors to ghostly presences and unwelcome memories, each gathering in this collection is filled with buoyancy and affection, with solemnity and sadness.The family stories that comprise Company lead to a deeper, more compelling truth about the rules by which we live - those that we inherit, and those that we make for ourselves.

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9781911590989

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Reviews

'A deftly woven tapestry that scrupulously depicts familial ties and estrangement, richly told with a nuance that allows each character dignity and grace' - New York Times 'Company introduces an unforgettable cast of characters who remind us that family can be both wound and salve. Sanders offers sharp and original insight into the intimate politics of race and class and the impossible rules we've inherited to navigate them. This is a brilliant and immaculate debut' - Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections 'Company is a story collection that eats like a novel. Each story feels like a completely different vision of the same majestically sprawling family, as these neurotic high achievers struggle to balance the duties of kinship, social appearances, and honesty to their true selves. Reading Shannon Sanders makes me want to visit home' - Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens 'If love is a many-splendored thing, family love is a little more complex. The extended clan Shannon Sanders conjures in Company is fully alive-and very funny!-recognizable but wholly new, and to read their stories is to get the gift you don't always get from your own family: the feeling of being seen' - Will Allison, author of Long Drive Home 'Assured and incisive, this collection hums with the dark comedy of striving and speaks the inconvenient necessity of affiliation as it unravels the complications of belonging. This clear-eyed debut brims human' - Tracy O'Neill, author of The Quotients

Author Information

Shannon Sanders lives and works near Washington, DC. Her fiction has appeared in One Story, Electric Literature, Joyland, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere, and was a 2020 winner of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.

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