Life in Miniature Book

From a powerful new voice in fiction comes a compelling debut about the delicate bond between daughters and mothers, and about leaving everything you know in order to find the place where you belong.

Adie has always known she was different. There's her size, for one thing. Born three months premature, Adie is the smallest of her peers. Then there's Adie's mother, who at first glance seems like so many other 1980s moms—clipping coupons and attending Feel the Burn aerobics classes. But beneath the surface is something erratic and unpredictable, something that makes her drag Adie and her older sister, Miriam, from one rental apartment to the next—until Miriam runs away.

Adie is left behind with her mother, who is convinced their lives are in real danger and takes Adie on a crazy run across northern California. Now Adie faces a stark choice: submit to this increasingly surreal adventure, or grow up in ways she never imagined...

"Life in Miniature is a stunning double portrait, subtly capturing a daughter's misconceptions of her mother's delusions—while simultaneously revealing the consequences for both—in a compulsively readable and deeply insightful first novel." —Jonathon Keats, author of The Book of the Unknown

"...a book of intelligence and grace that will make you laugh and cry." —Terry Gamble, author of Good Family

Publishers Weekly

In Schlossberg's eloquent debut, Adie, a wistful girl comes uneasily of age in 1980s California. Adie lives with Miriam, her older sister, and Mindy, their single mother, who has a nervous breakdown. Afterwards, it's like living at the epicenter of a continual earthquake as they, fueled by Mindy's instability and paranoia, embark on a near-nomadic existence. Enhanced by Adie's plucky perspective (on keeping family secrets: "If someone brings that up, just change the subject") and her close relationship with Miriam, the tale intensifies further when Miriam runs away with her boyfriend, leading Adie to an illuminating journey of discovery. With its echoes of Mona Simpson's Anywhere but Here, this is a solid beginning for Schlossberg; nuanced, moving, and surely a cut above the standard coming-of-age. (Dec.)