Making nice

"In Matt Sumell's blazing, heartbreaking first book, our rage-filled hero Alby is flailing wildly against the world around him--he punches his sister (she deserved it), "unprotectos" broads (they deserved it and liked it), gets drunk and picks fights (all deserved), defends defenseless creatures both large and small and spews insults at children, slow drivers, lunch ladies, and every single surviving member of his family. It seems he is the angriest young man in the history of angry young men, and in each of these stories, we watch him run at life with a breakneck speed. But after the loss of his mother to a long battle with cancer, swirling at the center of Alby's fury is a grief so big, so life-shatteringly profound, it might swallow him whole. As Alby drinks, screws, and jokes his way through his pain--from his childhood home on Long Island to a houseboat in a California and many somewheres in between--his heartache, his anger, his kindness and his capacity for good bubble up when he (and we) least expect it. One part Junot Diaz and one part Barry Hannah, MAKING NICE is a naked, hysterical rendering of a heart sorting through its broken pieces, clinging to laughter and rage to survive. With prose that is by turns mirthful, jagged, and devastatingly raw, Sumell delivers a powerful, full-steam-ahead debut that will wrestle you to the ground and keep you laughing even as you try to catch your breath. MAKING NICE is a new classic about love, loss and the fine line between grappling through grief and fighting for (and with) the only family you've got"--