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A family full of women question their lives before a ‘living wake’ in the Carnegie medal-winning novelist’s triumphant first book for adultsIn 2019, the poet Elizabeth Acevedo became the first writer of colour to win the Carnegie medal for her debut young adult novel in verse, The Poet X, and was shortlisted again in 2021 for Clap When You Land, both novels exploring the lives of teenage girls coming of age in a Dominican-American community. Now, in her first novel for adults, she expands these themes into an exuberant, polyphonic story of one family’s reckoning with their past.Flor Marte – the second eldest of four Dominican sisters now living in New York – has always had “an ear for the gossip of death”: whenever she dreams of her teeth shattering, a death follows soon after. So when, at 70, Flor announces plans to host her own “living wake”, her three sisters, her daughter Ona (who narrates the book), and her niece Yadi fear that she must have foreseen the worst. The book spans the three days of preparation for the wake, during which Ona’s narrative moves chapter by chapter between the six women as they each grapple with their unresolved questions: bad husbands, infertility, desire, and the dual lives and conflicting loyalties of first- and second-generation immigrants.Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo is published by Canongate (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply Continue reading...