Life and Other Love Songs

Trinity

Spring 1989

It wasn't like any funeral or burial or postburial I'd ever imagined. Not that I'd ever really imagined those things. But as I watched the cars line up along the curb, freshly arrived from the cemetery, all I could think about was the incredible strangeness of the funeral, burial and now, postburial we were all enduring. Everyone was piling out of their cars. They formed a kind of procession that moved over neatly mowed grass to the sidewalk. They made their way up the sloped driveway to the stone walkway and approached the tan brick house and the unlocked screen door that belonged to what was left of my family.

I hung back, leaving the hosting duties to my mother, a more than capable committee of one. She was standing next to the white maple coffee table where she'd stacked coasters and yellow, square cocktail napkins. She'd cooked, too, because the days of people bringing over casseroles and platters of food to fortify our bereaved family had ended years ago. Mrs. Neilson, though, from next door had come by with a vanilla pound cake earlier. The same pale, bland, aggressively bumpy cake she'd brought us when we moved to Bloomfield Hills fifteen years ago. And then again, years later, after my dad vanished.

My grandmother made a spot for the cake on the dining table where we'd set up a crowded buffet of roasted chicken, sliced and splayed artfully on two big platters with sprigs of parsley. There were also boiled potatoes, green beans and assorted sweets. I hefted the cake up next to a platter of brownies and chocolate chip cookies that my mother had bought at the A&P. She was a master of most of the homemaking arts. She crocheted scarves and sewed complete outfits with personalized labels embroidered with Created by Deborah Armstead. She could pack a good lunch and cook an even better dinner, but she'd never been much of a baker.

"Cut her some slack," my father used to say in a kind of backhanded defense of her various

Anissa Gray

Anissa Gray is a genius magnificent!
Caroline Kepnes

Life and Other Love Songs is a precisely observed, often beautiful book about family, love, loss and the hidden history that shapes lives The prose is beautiful and poignant.
The New York Times

"This novel wields themes of generational trauma, class and race as pickaxes, excavating a Black family s history and making room for the future to bloom.
Essence

Riveting, rhythmic, transcendent, Life and Other Love Songs is a stellar family saga. Anissa Gray is a writer to watch.
Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times bestselling author of Red at the Bone

Life and Other Love Songs builds beautifully we care about these characters while coming to understand that the ground beneath their feet is constructed of secrets. Anissa Gray s novel feels musical in structure the octaves rise when the music calls for it; truths are revealed by the invisible beats of this gorgeous, rich story.
Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward and Oprah Book Club Pick Hello Beautiful

Anissa Gray's Life and Other Love Songs is one of those rare novels that pulled me out of my life for a few days. The characters are real, vivid, complex - as in life. It's a story that explores the depths of darkness and fear, yet offers a window into hope.
Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes

Cleverly structured and emotionally precise, Love and Other Love Songs is a powerhouse ballad about a family whose histories shared and individual will pierce straight to the heart. With empathy and insight, Anissa Gray writes an expertly crafted family drama perfect for fans of Celeste Ng.
Tara Conklin, New York Times bestselling author The Last Romantics

Life and Other Love Songs is a harsh, sometimes haunting, astonishingly moving, exceptionally