Books
WHAT PEOPLE HAVE TO SAY
Frazier captures the relatable toggle between the private and the collective, between sinking into the anxieties of your life and grieving for the cruelties of the world. — The New York Times
Frazier’s economical debut is many things at once: a tale of high stakes on the open road, a bighearted portrait of a frayed family, a slightly off-color comedy and an indictment of repressive political regimes. — San Francisco Chronicle
“Off the Books made me put my kid to bed late—but I’m not mad about it! Instead, I’m grateful to Soma Mei Sheng Frazier for this riveting read. Without a doubt, one of the most complex, cool, hilarious, politically astute, and unexpected yet totally necessary novels I’ve read in forever.” — Kate Schatz, New York Times bestselling author of Do the Work and Rad American Women A-Z
“What an improbable page-turner! Suspenseful and political, OFF THE BOOKS proves deeply compassionate as well. A real pleasure.” — Gish Jen, author of The Resisters, the #1 recommendation by Oprah Daily for AAPI Heritage Month
“In Soma Mei Sheng Frazier’s Off the Books, student-turned-limo-driver Mei and her mysterious passenger travel from San Francisco to Syracuse and back, but also around the world and into the dark corners of humanity, as well as into Mei’s past and her struggle to make sense of her own identity and the recent death of her father. Along the way, we meet one of my favorite characters in a good long while, Mei’s iconoclastic, pot-smoking, funny, and wise grandfather. Soma Mei Sheng Frazier is a masterful storyteller who draws on humor and compassion to show us the world we live in, then asks us not to look away. I could have kept driving cross country with these characters forever.” — Lori Ostlund, author of Barnes & Noble Discover novel After the Parade
“Off the Books takes us off the beaten path. You will find yourself on a suspenseful ride with treacherous twists and turns that make this debut novel hard to put down. Frazier’s soulful, conversational style welcomes us into an easy friendship with Mei, the quirky, main character. When she discovers what matters to her, it matters to us.” — April Sinclair, author of Coffee Will Make You Black
“Delightfully offbeat yet weighty … It’s a fresh take on the classic American road novel.”
— Publishers Weekly
“A vital, enthralling debut in which devastating social commentary is delivered with a wink.”
— Kirkus (starred review)
MORE BUZZ
Soma’s award-winning short stories are available in teeny-tiny prose chapbooks:
- Don’t Give Up on Alan Greenspan, winner of CutBank‘s 2018 contest
- Salve, nominated for a CLMP Firecracker award by Nomadic Press, now with Black Lawrence Press
- Collateral Damage: A Triptych, winner of RopeWalk Press’s Editor’s Fiction Chapbook Prize
- Please see “Leave” for the correct version of the story truncated in the chapbook
Harsh and beautiful, yearning and deadly, the stories of Soma Mei Sheng Frazier will remind you of nothing less than the whole wide world. — Daniel Handler, AKA Lemony Snicket
“Brilliant is a word usually associated with diamonds therefore this is the appropriate word for Soma Mei Sheng Frazier who writes like a young Toni Morrison: clear, clean yet heart skipping for all the things she is not telling. Crisp. Deliciously enticing as the story unfolds. Soma is a wonderful writer on the rise. Perhaps I should have started this story with the first star of evening, visible to our planet but harking of another shore, lighting our sky. We walk the beach with her. And the tide pulls the diamonds to our hands.” — Nikki Giovanni, Oprah “Living Legend”
These intimate, gutsy, heartbreaking stories – stories about having bodies and having histories, having desire and having had desire – left me pleasantly shaken, cured of some psychic ailment I hadn’t known I was afflicted with. This book is full of secrets, frank revelations, brutal honesties and tenderness; hard-won emotional truths and the bittersweet understanding that our primary relationship is with our self. — Michelle Tea
“Collateral Damage introduces a brave, compassionate writer unafraid to look closely at the unintended yet far-reaching consequences of war. The narrators in this triptych couldn’t be more different from one another, yet each of their voices is equally clear, equally memorable – ‘bringing the news from one world to another,’ as Raymond Carver said, in a movingly human way.” — Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
“Reading these stories is like stepping into a mine field—there is a sharp sense of danger and quick little explosions of pain and poetry, hurt and healing, on every page. These are war stories, brilliantly lit with insight and compassion.” — Molly Giles
“This set of stories beautifully captures the unavoidable ripple effect of violence that war inflicts upon its (distant, unintended, secondary) victims. Ordinary life, and lives, also suffers the after-shock, leaving the living guilty and grief-stricken and hard-pressed to name themselves ‘lucky.’ A very powerful triptych from a writer to watch.” — Antonya Nelson
– attend a book signing, reading or discussion
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