Heralded for writing "deeply memorable . . . women" (Jennifer Senior, New York Times), Nicole Dennis-Benn introduces readers to an unforgettable heroine for our times: the eponymous Patsy, who leaves her young daughter behind in Jamaica to follow Cicely, her oldest friend, to New York. Beating with the pulse of a long-withheld confession and peppered with lilting patois, Patsy gives voice to a woman who looks to America for the opportunity to love whomever she chooses, bravely putting herself first. But to survive as an undocumented immigrant, Patsy is forced to work as a nanny, while back in Jamaica her daughter, Tru, ironically struggles to understand why she was left behind. Greeted with international critical acclaim from readers who, at last, saw themselves represented in Patsy, this astonishing novel "fills a literary void with compassion, complexity and tenderness" (Joshunda Sanders, Time), offering up a vital portrait of the chasms between selfhood and motherhood, the American dream and reality.
BIO
Nicole Dennis-Benn is the author of Here Comes the Sun, a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the Lambda Literary Award. Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, she teaches at Princeton and lives with her wife in Brooklyn, New York.
REVIEWS
"Nicole Dennis-Benn carefully unspools the stories behind each wound over the long course of this richly imagined novel... [she] beautifully illustrates how the characters are connected to one another by love, desire and violence, and how they bear those histories permanently, both within and on their bodies. [ Patsy] continually and subtly defies predictability as it tells a vital and remarkable life story.... I never knew what turn the story would take next, how the past would reassert itself, what alliances and rifts would form, where love would fail and where it would unexpectedly appear. Again and again, Patsy surprises and illuminates." --Chelsey Johnson, New York Times
"One of my favourite novels of 2017 was easily Nicole Dennis-Benn's first novel, Here Comes the Sun, and when her second, Patsy, was announced, I almost lost my mind. The richness of Dennis-Benn's writing is taken to another level in Patsy, the story of a Jamaican woman working towards her own version of the American dream.... Dennis-Benn explores in such a textured, taut way what in love is gained, and what, or who, is left behind.... Bliss." --Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie: A Novel
"A stunningly powerful inter-generational novel about the price--the ransom really-- women must pay to choose themselves, their lives, their value, their humanity. Frank, funny, salty, heartbreaking, full of love, Dennis-Benn is a map-maker to those places in the heart held so closely, the holder may not know even they're there." --Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
[H] Liveright Publishing Corporation / June 04, 2019
1.5" H x 9.8" L x 6.4" W (1.5 lbs) 432 pages
[P] Liveright Publishing Corporation / May 26, 2020
1.1" H x 8.0" L x 5.4" W (0.75 lbs) 432 pages