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“A big-hearted, tightly-plotted novel that bravely takes on our times by looking at the timeless stuff of human intimacy. The Limits is an immersive and powerful book.” –Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind
From Mo’orea, a tiny volcanic island off the coast of Tahiti, a French biologist obsessed with saving Polynesia’s imperiled coral reefs sends her teenage daughter to live with her ex-husband in New York. By the time fifteen-year-old Pia arrives at her father Stephen’s luxury apartment in Manhattan and meets his new, younger wife, Kate, she has been shuttled between her parents’ disparate lives—her father’s consuming work as a surgeon at an overwhelmed New York hospital, her mother’s relentless drive against a ticking ecological clock—for most of her life. Fluent in French, intellectually precocious, moving between cultures with seeming ease, Pia arrives in New York poised for a rebellion, just as COVID sends her and her stepmother together into near total isolation.
A New York City schoolteacher, Kate struggles to connect with a teenager whose capacity for destruction seems exceeded only by her privilege. Even as Kate fails to parent Pia—and questions her own ability to become a mother—one of her sixteen-year-old students is already caring for a toddler full time. Athyna’s love for her nephew, Marcus, is a burden that becomes heavier as she struggles to finish her senior year online. Juggling her manifold responsibilities, Athyna finds herself more and more anxious every time she leaves the house. Just as her fear of what is waiting for her outside her Staten Island community feels insupportable, an incident at home makes her desperate to leave.
When their lives collide, Pia and Athyna spiral toward parallel but inescapably different tragedies. Moving from a South Pacific “paradise,” where rage still simmers against the colonial government and its devastating nuclear tests, to the extreme inequalities of twenty-first century New York City, The Limits is an unforgettably moving novel about nation, race, class, and family. Heart-wrenching and humane, a profound work from one of America’s most prodigiously gifted novelists.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 9, 2024 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780593448892
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780593448892
- File size: 5825 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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November 1, 2023
Freudenberger (Lost and Wanted) has racked up numerous accolades, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a PEN/Malamud Award. Her latest novel, set in French Polynesia and New York City, is a heart-wrenching tale that considers race, class, and family as three characters experience a life-changing year during the COVID pandemic. Prepub Alert.
Copyright 2023 Library Journal
Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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February 5, 2024
Freudenberger (Lost and Wanted) offers a layered story of race and privilege set against the backdrop of Covid-19 lockdowns. Pia, 15, has been raised since her parents’ divorce five years ago on the island of Mo’orea in French Polynesia by her marine biologist mother, Nathalie. Now, in fall 2020, Pia’s sent to live with her father, Stephen, a cardiologist in New York City, where, with Covid case numbers decreasing and the lockdown lifting, Nathalie hopes she will get some much needed “socialization of her peers.” Stephen lives with his younger, pregnant wife, high school teacher Kate, whose relationship with Pia starts off strained. Meanwhile, one of Kate’s students, Athyna, who is Black, takes care of her toddler nephew full-time while trying to complete her senior year remotely in Staten Island. The eventual friendship between Pia and Athyna provides an opportunity for Freudenberger to explore the girls’ varying experience of the pandemic due to racial and class differences, as when Athyna joins the family in the Hamptons and Pia urges her to say she’s Pia’s friend to anyone who asks where she lives. Freudenberger’s longtime fans will find all the probing social insights and well-drawn characters they’ve come to expect from this accomplished author. -
February 1, 2024
In Tahiti and New York, a white family splintered by divorce and geography confronts problems during the pandemic. Freudenberger's fourth novel opens underwater in Polynesia on the last day of 2020, where French marine biologist Nathalie is scuba diving when she is called to shore to take a phone call. It's her ex-husband's second wife phoning from New York to say they have lost track of 15-year-old Pia, who hasn't been seen for several days. This particular plotline, which unfolds over the course of a day, is one among several in this complex novel with five point-of-view characters: Nathalie; her ex, Stephen, a physician in the intensive care unit of a New York hospital; their daughter, Pia; Stephen's pregnant second wife, Kate, a high school teacher; and Athyna, one of Kate's students, a Black girl who cares for her toddler nephew. The apparent threat and suspense generated by the missing-teenager story attenuates fairly quickly, and this slackening is echoed in so many other threads that it almost seems a motif. There's a secret email correspondence, a snarky hidden notebook, an age-inappropriate infatuation, a car accident on a Long Island expressway, a character who walks into a chainsaw blade; there's the politics of colonialism, nuclear testing, and coral mining; and of course, there's the Covid-era ICU and the pregnancy. It would be a lot to worry about, but after a while, you realize you don't need to worry. "I have the balls," says one character, explaining why one of the bad things has been called off, "not the stomach." As in Freudenberger's previous work, scientific points are well integrated and explained, and the intelligent, precise narration is a pleasure, with graceful depiction of the characters' inner lives. Too much and not enough.COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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March 1, 2024
Freudenberger follows Lost and Wanted (2019) with another intriguing tale of a woman scientist, family, and life's confoundments. French marine biologist Nathalie is studying the impact of climate change on corals near a French Polynesian atoll. Her American cardiologist ex-husband is navigating the maelstrom of COVID-19 in New York City. Their teenage daughter, Pia, is pulled between them, a tug-of-heart complicated by two disparate places, cultures, and crises. Stephen's second wife, Kate, a high-school teacher with a painful past, is pregnant and teaching remotely. One of her students, Athyna, is struggling with alarming problems at home, posing a rending contrast to privileged, if miserable, Pia. Darkly obsessed with the ongoing damage wrought by nuclear testing in the Pacific, Pia left "paradise" for New York, but stays in touch with Raffi, a Tahitian who works for Nathalie's lab and who may be considering ecosabotage to protest the looming threat of catastrophically disruptive undersea mining. Freudenberger is fluent in every realm, social conundrum, and crime against the earth she brings into focus, keenly attuned to science and emotion, tradition and high-tech, race and gender, greed and conscience, irony and tragedy. Each character's challenges are significant on scales intimate and global and their wrestling with secrets, anger, and fear grows increasingly suspenseful in this lambent, deeply sympathetic, and thought-provoking novel.COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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