Nebraska by Monica Datta

Some stories arrive quietly and settle into your bones. This is one of them.

Nebraska is the captivating and tragicomic tale of the Chatterjee family and the catastrophe that tore them apart—a novel for readers who loved Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny and Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads.

Here’s where it begins: Anna Chatterjee has just been released from prison. Her husband, Prabir, arrives to bring her home—only to find her already gone. Their grown children, the flighty and artistic Neal and Nina, are left to navigate the fallout, both from Anna’s disappearance and the older trauma that splintered their family years ago.

And so the question lingers, page after page: Where is Anna now?

The story ricochets between past and present, decades and continents. Along the way, we meet the spritely Lacanian Jean-Louis Katz, whose life becomes tangled with the Chatterjees’ and with the Bengali psychoanalyst B.X. Roy. It’s a meditation on the twentieth-century experiment and everything it left behind.

With precision, range, and deep emotional insight, this is an all-enveloping read—a novel of characters who, though profoundly separate, all reach toward the irresolvable questions that make us human.

It’s a book made for lingering. The kind you carry to a quiet corner while the sea air drifts in through the window.

Nestled here on our shelves in Perkins Cove, this handsome hardcover new release is waiting for you. Come browse. We’d love to help you discover your next favorite read.

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