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Table of Contents
About The Book
“A magic spell of a book.” —Julie Buntin
“Heavy Cream is funny, deeply felt, and positively effervescent, brimming with life and color and texture—I was repeatedly struck by its humor, its compassion, and its candor.” —Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had
Abandoned by her mother in New York, sixteen-year-old Geraldine falls under the influence of three women, each seeking to form her in their image, in this “wildly perceptive” (Stefan Merrill Block, New York Times bestselling author of Homeschooled) coming-of-age story from the bestselling author of Alice Sadie Celine.
For Gerry, growing up on the road has always been her mother and her, locked in dysfunction. Homeschooled, she hasn’t learned much math. Instead, her mother has taught her how to spend the day at a motel’s swimming pool without being a guest and how to dodge paying extra for the chicken on a Caesar salad.
Gerry learns how to pass and adapt, but when she is abandoned in the city, Gerry finds herself in the care of three very different women, each intent on shaping her?into competing and incompatible selves. First, there is her mother’s old college friend Bonnie, who lives in a world of country clubs and chintzy domesticity. Then there is Nell, her mother’s estranged sister and a successful artist, who insists on ambition and self-invention. And finally Finley, an old-money socialite, who ushers Gerry into a rarefied world of Manhattan privilege.
A coming-of-age novel story that explores unconventional forms of motherhood and caretaking, Heavy Cream is both a charming comedy of manners and a deeply probing look at the complexities of love, mental illness, and inheritance, and one young woman’s eccentric path to selfhood.
“Heavy Cream is funny, deeply felt, and positively effervescent, brimming with life and color and texture—I was repeatedly struck by its humor, its compassion, and its candor.” —Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had
Abandoned by her mother in New York, sixteen-year-old Geraldine falls under the influence of three women, each seeking to form her in their image, in this “wildly perceptive” (Stefan Merrill Block, New York Times bestselling author of Homeschooled) coming-of-age story from the bestselling author of Alice Sadie Celine.
For Gerry, growing up on the road has always been her mother and her, locked in dysfunction. Homeschooled, she hasn’t learned much math. Instead, her mother has taught her how to spend the day at a motel’s swimming pool without being a guest and how to dodge paying extra for the chicken on a Caesar salad.
Gerry learns how to pass and adapt, but when she is abandoned in the city, Gerry finds herself in the care of three very different women, each intent on shaping her?into competing and incompatible selves. First, there is her mother’s old college friend Bonnie, who lives in a world of country clubs and chintzy domesticity. Then there is Nell, her mother’s estranged sister and a successful artist, who insists on ambition and self-invention. And finally Finley, an old-money socialite, who ushers Gerry into a rarefied world of Manhattan privilege.
A coming-of-age novel story that explores unconventional forms of motherhood and caretaking, Heavy Cream is both a charming comedy of manners and a deeply probing look at the complexities of love, mental illness, and inheritance, and one young woman’s eccentric path to selfhood.
About The Author
Sylvie Rosokoff
Sarah Blakley-Cartwright is the author of Alice Sadie Celine and Red Riding Hood, a #1 New York Times bestseller published worldwide in thirty-eight editions and fifteen languages. She is the editor of Hauser & Wirth’s The Artist’s Library for Ursula magazine and an associate editor at A Public Space.
Product Details
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster (September 29, 2026)
- Length: 304 pages
- ISBN13: 9781668217740
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Raves and Reviews
"Heavy Cream is a mesmerizing novel about the intoxicating, impossible bond between a mother and daughter, told in prose that is at once razor-sharp, funny, and devastating. Sarah Blakley-Cartwright captures the way love and manipulation become indistinguishable, refusing easy villains or simple redemption. It's a tender and complicated portrait of inheritance, identity, and the impossible work of becoming yourself."
—Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter
"Gerry's voice is addictive, a keen observer of everyone and everything, except, in the way of all great first-person narrators, herself, particularly how her love and longing for her mother shapes her choices. This story of mothers and daughters and the lengths we will go to find—or make—a home, is one of the most effervescent, complex coming-of-age stories I've read in years. A magic spell of a book."
—Julie Buntin, author of Marlena and Famous Men
"Heavy Cream is a lively, knotted, fun and funny, and also deeply felt, exploration of loving and being loved as one thrilling, complicated young woman attempts to make sense of who she is. How does a daughter form in the shadow of an absent mother; when given a klatch of other not quite mothers to choose from, all with their own draws and flaws and motives, how and why and who does she choose to become?"
—Lynn Steger Strong, author of Flight, Want, and Hold Still
"Unequivocally the best book I've read this year. Sarah Blakley-Cartwright's writing is elegant, painful, and funny. A mother-daughter story with all the wit and feeling of Susie Boyt's Loved and Missed. Heavy Cream nails the profound, often horrifying, experience of figuring out who you are in relation to the people who raised you."
—Erin Somers, author of The Ten Year Affair
"Heavy Cream is a moving and brilliantly written novel that explores the imperfect connection between a mother and daughter and questions the role of caretaking—or lack thereof—in the formation of identity. I absolutely loved this smart, spiky story."
—Camille Perri, author of Social Animals
“As a former homeschool kid, I’m always looking out for the Great Homeschool Novel, and I suspected after a couple chapters of Heavy Cream that I’d finally found it. But, actually, this novel turned out to be much, much more. In this aching, witty, vibey, wildly perceptive story of a teenage girl whose sense of self is repeatedly upended by the whims of the four women vying for her love, Sarah Blakley-Cartwright has proven that she might just be the greatest literary writer of adolescence at work today.”
—Stefan Merrill Block, New York Times bestselling author of Homeschooled: a Memoir
Praise for Alice Sadie Celine:
“It’s fantastic—fresh, complicated, brisk, and sexy.” —Catherine Newman
"Delicious and subversive, Alice Sadie Celine is a mesmerizing read.” —Yiyun Li
"Wickedly delightful.”
—THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
“A heartfelt, smart, and keenly observed take on friendship and fulfillment, and what it means to start thinking of parents as actual people.”
—TOWN & COUNTRY MAGAZINE
“This satisfies the head and the heart.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Gerry's voice is addictive, a keen observer of everyone and everything, except, in the way of all great first-person narrators, herself, particularly how her love and longing for her mother shapes her choices. This story of mothers and daughters and the lengths we will go to find—or make—a home, is one of the most effervescent, complex coming-of-age stories I've read in years. A magic spell of a book."
—Julie Buntin, author of Marlena and Famous Men
Resources and Downloads
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Book Cover Image (jpg): Heavy Cream
Hardcover 9781668217740
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Author Photo (jpg): Sarah Blakley-Cartwright Sylvie Rosokoff(0.1 MB)
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