Lonely Crowds - by Stephanie Wambugu (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Luster meets The Idiot in this riveting debut novel about a volatile friendship between two outsiders who escape their bleak childhoods and enter the glamorous early '90s art world in New York City, where only one of them can make it.

Ruth, an only child of recent immigrants to New England, lives in an emotionally cold home and attends the local Catholic girl's school on a scholarship. Maria, a beautiful orphan whose Panamanian mother dies by suicide and is taken care of by an ill, unloving aunt, is one of the only other students attending the school on a scholarship. Ruth is drawn forcefully into Maria's orbit, and they fall into an easy, yet intense, friendship. Her devotion to her charming and bright new friend opens up her previously sheltered world.

While Maria, charismatic and aware of her ability to influence others, eases into her full self, embracing her sexuality and her desire to be an artist, Ruth is mostly content to follow her around: to college and then into the early-nineties art world of New York City. There, ambition and competition threaten to rupture their friendship, while strong and unspoken forces pull them together over the years. Whereas Maria finds early success in New York City as an artist, Ruth stumbles along the fringes of the art world, pulled toward a quieter life of work and marriage. As their lives converge and diverge, they meet in one final and fateful confrontation.

Ruth and Maria's decades-long friendship interrogates the nature of intimacy, desire, class and time. What does it mean to be an artist and to be true to oneself? What does it mean to give up on an obsession? Marking the arrival of a sensational new literary talent, Lonely Crowds challenges us to reckon honestly with our own ambitions and the lives we hope to lead.

Review Quotes

"Wambugu's mesmerizing debut novel is like a slow-burning fire, drawing readers into its world with quiet intensity...Wambugu's prose is sharp and meticulous, effortlessly capturing the nuances of artistic ambition and the emotional weight of creativity. The novel explores how art both shapes and distorts relationships, asking whether self-expression can ever be truly separate from the people who inspire and enact it. Compelling and evocative, the impact of Lonely Crowds lingers long after the final page is turned."--Booklist

"Lonely Crowds is an extraordinary novel filled with a special kind of wisdom and grace: each page a marvel of precision and intimacy that will pull at every strand of your heart."--Dinaw Menegetsu, author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears and How to Read the Air

"A heartstopping debut. This icy flame of a novel distills what it's like to try to become yourself amidst the ravages of faith."--Namwali Serpell, author of The Old Drift and The Furrows

"Lonely Crowds is an artist's novel of uncommon elegance--a singular portrait of love and guilt and envy, self-discovery and self-deception, struck through with blazing need. Stephanie Wambugu writes with a clerestoried brilliance that throws striking light and strange shadows across her unforgettable narrator Ruth's traversals of youth, schooling, and becoming. A sensation."--Alexandra Tanner, author of Worry

"Stephanie Wambugu has written a coming-of-age friendship novel for the ages. Her prose and vision are sharp and she writes about art and ambition with a rare combination of frankness and grace."--Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends

About the Author

Stephanie Wambugu was born in Mombasa, Kenya in 1998 and grew up in Rhode Island. She lives and works in New York, where she received her MFA from Columbia University. She is an editor of Joyland Magazine. Lonely Crowds is her first novel.