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A transcendent debut novel that follows a critic, an artist, and a desirous, determined young woman as they find their way - and ultimately collide - amid the ever-evolving New York City art scene of the 1980´s.

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"An intoxicating Manhattan fairy tale...As affecting as it is absorbing. A thrilling debut." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A vital, sensuous, edgy, and suspenseful tale of longing, rage, fear, compulsion, and love." -Booklist (starred review)

A transcendent debut novel that follows a critic, an artist, and a desirous, determined young woman as they find their way-and ultimately collide-amid the ever-evolving New York City art scene of the 1980s.

Welcome to SoHo at the onset of the eighties: a gritty, not-yet-gentrified playground for artists and writers looking to make it in the big city. Among them: James Bennett, a synesthetic art critic for the New York Times whose unlikely condition enables him to describe art in profound, magical ways, and Raul Engales, an exiled Argentinian painter running from his past and the Dirty War that has enveloped his country. As the two men ascend in the downtown arts scene, dual tragedies strike, and each is faced with a loss that acutely affects his relationship to life and to art. It is not until they are inadvertently brought together by Lucy Olliason-a small town beauty and Raul´s muse-and a young orphan boy sent mysteriously from Buenos Aires, that James and Raul are able to rediscover some semblance of what they´ve lost.

As inventive as Jennifer Egan´s A Visit From The Goon Squad and as sweeping as Meg Wolitzer´s The Interestings, Tuesday Nights in 1980 boldly renders a complex moment when the meaning and nature of art is being all but upended, and New York City as a whole is reinventing itself. In risk-taking prose that is as powerful as it is playful, Molly Prentiss deftly explores the need for beauty, community, creation, and love in an ever-changing urban landscape.

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"It isn´t easy to write a novel about art, and even harder to write a novel about art this good, with this much energy and verve and sense of adventure -- and Molly Prentiss has done it. ´Tuesday Nights in 1980´ is much more than an accomplished first novel; it is a beautifully written story of creation and transformation, set against a backdrop of urban decay and political violence. I loved this book." Daniel Alarcón, author of At Night We Walk in Circles & Lost City Radio

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Prentiss, Molly
Molly Prentiss was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California. She was a Writer in Residence at Workspace at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Vermont Studio Center and was chosen as an Emerging Writer Fellow by the Aspen Writers Foundation. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the California College of the Arts. She lives in Brooklyn.

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