Night Night Fawn, Night Night Fawn

From the author of Confessions of the Fox comes a novel in which a yenta on her deathbed begins to look back at all her failures—including her child.“A novel as wickedly funny as it is smart . . . I have simply never read anything like it—exactly the queer, Marxist, yenta-narrated tour de force that we need right now.”—Melissa Febos, National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author of Body WorkIn a cluttered rent-controlled apartment in the middle of Manhattan, Barbara Rosenberg—old world yenta, committed homophobe, accomplished jazzercizer—is terminally ill, high on opioids, and writing the story of her life. Forget about her late husband, her career as the receptionist for an Upper East Side plastic surgeon, and her failed aspirations to be an actress. What she really wants to talk about are her unhinged thoughts on gender, Karl Marx, Jewish diaspora, and her two great disappointing loves: an estranged trans son and a long lost best friend whose betrayal haunts Barbara still. As she descends further into delirium and illness, Barbara’s theories get wilder, and her circumstances put her on a crash course with these intimates once again. Part novel, part someone’s mother’s unauthorized memoir, this novel is a timely exploration of sexuality, intergenerational conflict, and who gets to have an intellectual life.