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Porcupines: A Novel
Not yet published
Expected 14 Apr 26For fans of Gilmore Girls and Gary Shteyngart, a sharp and brilliantly observed debut set across Southern California, with stops in DC and Budapest, about a young single mother and her increasingly inquisitive daughter, who wakes up one day and decides to find out who her father is.
Los Angeles, 2001. Sonia is a single mother who spends her time running away from PTA moms, engaging in not-quite-illegal business activities involving rich Eastern Europeans and high-tech gadgets, and raising her beloved Milosh, Mila. Cast in her mother’s image, Mila is a precocious, intelligent girl with a burgeoning Shostakovich obsession. The pair live an unconventional life and are, all in all, quite happy together. But Sonia’s guarded life and refusal to discuss their family has left Mila lonely and isolated. When she stumbles across emails between her mother and an unknown man, Mila’s curiosity about her father leads her to form a plan, putting into motion a chain of events that will cause their carefully constructed lives to implode.
Flashback to 1990. The world has begun to breathe again after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Eighteen-year-old Szonja Imre travels to visit her sister in LA in search of the quintessential adventure in the “land of the free.” What she doesn’t expect is the discovery that her sister Rina’s conception of the American dream is vastly different from hers—a lot less Hollywood and more, as Szonja eloquently puts it, “Jewish Stepford Wife.” Rina finds freedom in reconnecting with her roots, but Szonja can’t see how Rina’s new life is less restricted than the one she left behind in Budapest. Their disparate lifestyles lead to conflict, and when Szonja ends up in a difficult situation, she makes a series of snap decisions that leave her navigating America alone as an illegal immigrant.
Taking place across Budapest in the years preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall, DC in the thick of cold war politics, and the bright sunshine of retro LA, Porcupines captures the rich, complex, and entirely absorbing relationships between sisters, mothers, and daughters. At its heart, it is a book about all the ways we find community and companionship, sometimes in the unlikeliest of places.
Los Angeles, 2001. Sonia is a single mother who spends her time running away from PTA moms, engaging in not-quite-illegal business activities involving rich Eastern Europeans and high-tech gadgets, and raising her beloved Milosh, Mila. Cast in her mother’s image, Mila is a precocious, intelligent girl with a burgeoning Shostakovich obsession. The pair live an unconventional life and are, all in all, quite happy together. But Sonia’s guarded life and refusal to discuss their family has left Mila lonely and isolated. When she stumbles across emails between her mother and an unknown man, Mila’s curiosity about her father leads her to form a plan, putting into motion a chain of events that will cause their carefully constructed lives to implode.
Flashback to 1990. The world has begun to breathe again after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Eighteen-year-old Szonja Imre travels to visit her sister in LA in search of the quintessential adventure in the “land of the free.” What she doesn’t expect is the discovery that her sister Rina’s conception of the American dream is vastly different from hers—a lot less Hollywood and more, as Szonja eloquently puts it, “Jewish Stepford Wife.” Rina finds freedom in reconnecting with her roots, but Szonja can’t see how Rina’s new life is less restricted than the one she left behind in Budapest. Their disparate lifestyles lead to conflict, and when Szonja ends up in a difficult situation, she makes a series of snap decisions that leave her navigating America alone as an illegal immigrant.
Taking place across Budapest in the years preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall, DC in the thick of cold war politics, and the bright sunshine of retro LA, Porcupines captures the rich, complex, and entirely absorbing relationships between sisters, mothers, and daughters. At its heart, it is a book about all the ways we find community and companionship, sometimes in the unlikeliest of places.
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Expected publication April 14, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 7, 2025
In 1990, when she is eighteen and pregnant, Sonia makes a life-changing decision. Eleven years later, she is a single mother in Los Angeles. Her daughter Mila is intelligent, and likely a little bit lonely. Sonia is guarded and secretive and Mila begins to wonder about her father. She thinks a school trip to San Francisco may help her solve the mystery.
This is an intriguing character study of Sonia and the difficult decisions she makes. You can feel her unease at her circumstances (and her great love for Mila) throughout the pages. I look forward to reading more by the author.
Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a copy.
This is an intriguing character study of Sonia and the difficult decisions she makes. You can feel her unease at her circumstances (and her great love for Mila) throughout the pages. I look forward to reading more by the author.
Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a copy.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
4,75 stars rounded up to 5 on Goodreads
Honestly, I didn't know what to expect when I went into this book, but as a Hungarian person I was very intrigued to read something written about people who emigrated from Hungary and how they are finding life in foreign places.
Our story follows Sonia mainly, but also we get to see more of her family members as well. The story jumps between time and places, which I found interesting, and I loved to see where or when are we, and I think sometimes if we think about our own life we are also jumping between memories and events, at least I do, so it felt realistic. What I really adored as a small but very thoughtful thing is, how Sonia's name was Szonja when she was talking about her Hungarian past stories, she hadn't got in touch with the places where she became Sonia, where she'd change her name (accidentally) and try to shed her past.
We don't only see Sonia's struggles with moving into a foreign place, we can see how she is trying to raise her daughter, as good as she knows how, but obviously she is not perfect, none of us are, but seeing her change from the beginning until the end of the book. It was great.
What was a bit sad for me, as like a punch to the gut, if I may say that, is how realistically Hungary has been represented in this book, and it's sad to see your home country be a sad miserable place, but sometimes the people who have lived here have been through hell and they are suspicious of everyone around them, they don't trust others. But many things mentioned in the book are still around, which also felt very nostalgic to me, the Brand drink or the Women's page magazine, I also saw them a lot in my childhood, and it was fun to see that some things also doesn't change. Life is a weird thing, some things you wish would change and some things will never change, but the people, as we can see in Sonia too, started to open to the world and be less closed off, and that is the first step.
I really enjoyed this book, and I related to many things, so if anyone would like to get a realistic grap on Hungarian people, or if you are just feeling lonely when you moved abroad? If you just want to read something emotional? In many cases this is the book you are looking for.
Honestly, I didn't know what to expect when I went into this book, but as a Hungarian person I was very intrigued to read something written about people who emigrated from Hungary and how they are finding life in foreign places.
Our story follows Sonia mainly, but also we get to see more of her family members as well. The story jumps between time and places, which I found interesting, and I loved to see where or when are we, and I think sometimes if we think about our own life we are also jumping between memories and events, at least I do, so it felt realistic. What I really adored as a small but very thoughtful thing is, how Sonia's name was Szonja when she was talking about her Hungarian past stories, she hadn't got in touch with the places where she became Sonia, where she'd change her name (accidentally) and try to shed her past.
We don't only see Sonia's struggles with moving into a foreign place, we can see how she is trying to raise her daughter, as good as she knows how, but obviously she is not perfect, none of us are, but seeing her change from the beginning until the end of the book. It was great.
What was a bit sad for me, as like a punch to the gut, if I may say that, is how realistically Hungary has been represented in this book, and it's sad to see your home country be a sad miserable place, but sometimes the people who have lived here have been through hell and they are suspicious of everyone around them, they don't trust others. But many things mentioned in the book are still around, which also felt very nostalgic to me, the Brand drink or the Women's page magazine, I also saw them a lot in my childhood, and it was fun to see that some things also doesn't change. Life is a weird thing, some things you wish would change and some things will never change, but the people, as we can see in Sonia too, started to open to the world and be less closed off, and that is the first step.
I really enjoyed this book, and I related to many things, so if anyone would like to get a realistic grap on Hungarian people, or if you are just feeling lonely when you moved abroad? If you just want to read something emotional? In many cases this is the book you are looking for.
January 14, 2026
I very much enjoyed this unique, novel
The first chapter of this novel had me gripped. It’s obviously going to be a witty and intriguing intelligent novel
This is the story of Hungarian Sonia who whilst visiting her sister in America becomes pregnant as a teenager. It’s a story of immigration and integration.
Sonia has herself as a quirky character and her daughter has similar personality. There’s a strong element of otherness in the story. They are other because they are Hungarian. They are other because they are different in other ways her young daughter for example seems to have autistic tendencies. The title of the book refers to this prickliness or otherness of their family.
The author has a witty amusing easily read writing style. I very much enjoyed reading this book.
There is excellent character development the family feel like real people and there’s a whole cast of quirky others
I enjoyed the way the Story is told in a mixture of present time and flashbacks and the way that this jumped around so that you learnt more about the family’s origins as you read through the novel
I thought the ending was fabulous
I read an early copy of the novel on NetGalley UK in return for an unbiased review. The book is published in the UK on the 16th of April 2026 by penguin UK fig tree
This review will appear on NetGalley UK, Goodreads, StoryGraph and my book blog bionicSarahsbooks.wordpress.com after publication it will also appear on Amazon and Waterstones
The first chapter of this novel had me gripped. It’s obviously going to be a witty and intriguing intelligent novel
This is the story of Hungarian Sonia who whilst visiting her sister in America becomes pregnant as a teenager. It’s a story of immigration and integration.
Sonia has herself as a quirky character and her daughter has similar personality. There’s a strong element of otherness in the story. They are other because they are Hungarian. They are other because they are different in other ways her young daughter for example seems to have autistic tendencies. The title of the book refers to this prickliness or otherness of their family.
The author has a witty amusing easily read writing style. I very much enjoyed reading this book.
There is excellent character development the family feel like real people and there’s a whole cast of quirky others
I enjoyed the way the Story is told in a mixture of present time and flashbacks and the way that this jumped around so that you learnt more about the family’s origins as you read through the novel
I thought the ending was fabulous
I read an early copy of the novel on NetGalley UK in return for an unbiased review. The book is published in the UK on the 16th of April 2026 by penguin UK fig tree
This review will appear on NetGalley UK, Goodreads, StoryGraph and my book blog bionicSarahsbooks.wordpress.com after publication it will also appear on Amazon and Waterstones
November 20, 2025
The cover synopsis for PORCUPINE is a little underwhelming. The book is an interesting, entertaining slice of the lives of a family of women and the communications between them. It's obvious this family cares for each other, but it's left to others to make them see how much. A Hungarian family that has traveled as diplomatic ambassadors, gaining skills and experience from many nationalities, has now settled in Hungary before the demolition of the Berlin Wall. The family, father, mother, and two daughters, is tested as beliefs and loyalties shift. Fran Fabriczki skillfully builds the challenges the family faces, especially when the older daughter marries into a traditional Jewish family and immigrates to Los Angeles. The younger sister rebels against the strict paternal guidelines; she will "visit" her sister, becoming an illegal immigrant when she faces an unplanned pregnancy. At this point, the story skips ahead to the child at ten years of age.
The story is told in multiple POV and multiple timelines. At first, this caused a bit of confusion, but it felt natural as the story progressed. I loved this book much more than I thought I would. It's a great story of how families cause their own problems and solutions. The ending is beautiful. I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a different kind of love story. 5 easy stars.
The story is told in multiple POV and multiple timelines. At first, this caused a bit of confusion, but it felt natural as the story progressed. I loved this book much more than I thought I would. It's a great story of how families cause their own problems and solutions. The ending is beautiful. I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a different kind of love story. 5 easy stars.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
What a debut! Porcupines follows Szonja (a young Hungarian woman growing up under Communism) during a formative summer in the United States while visiting her sister. Immersed in an unfamiliar culture and surrounded by permissive, curious teenagers, Szonja comes of age far from home.
The novel moves fluidly between that late-1980s American summer and Szonja’s later life in California as the mother of a ten-year-old daughter. As her daughter begins to ask questions about identity, family, and origins, past and present start to bleed into each other in surprising and often very funny ways. I especially appreciated how Fabriczki explores Szonja’s Jewish roots alongside her sister’s turn toward Orthodox Judaism, presenting faith and identity as fluid, deeply personal, and sometimes conflicted rather than fixed.
What makes Porcupines so compelling is its warmth and restraint. The writing is observant and precise, beautifully capturing the strangeness of growing up between cultures and the way identity continues to shift across generations. This is a book I’ll be recommending to everyone I meet.
5⭐
Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC!
The novel moves fluidly between that late-1980s American summer and Szonja’s later life in California as the mother of a ten-year-old daughter. As her daughter begins to ask questions about identity, family, and origins, past and present start to bleed into each other in surprising and often very funny ways. I especially appreciated how Fabriczki explores Szonja’s Jewish roots alongside her sister’s turn toward Orthodox Judaism, presenting faith and identity as fluid, deeply personal, and sometimes conflicted rather than fixed.
What makes Porcupines so compelling is its warmth and restraint. The writing is observant and precise, beautifully capturing the strangeness of growing up between cultures and the way identity continues to shift across generations. This is a book I’ll be recommending to everyone I meet.
5⭐
Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
“Porcupines” by Fran Fabriczki is an interesting novel about a family of Hungarian women. It is told in duel time lines, before the demolition of the Berlin Wall and during the 1980s in California.
The story revolves around two sisters and their vastly different experiences of being immigrants in America and wanting to live the American dream. One sister marries into a conservative Jewish family, as the other sister survives as a very unconventional single mom navigating alone as an Illegal immigrant. Their disparate lifestyles lead to a lot of conflict but at the same time describes the way they each find community and companionship.
An enjoyable story about sisters, motherhood, and identity.
Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
The story revolves around two sisters and their vastly different experiences of being immigrants in America and wanting to live the American dream. One sister marries into a conservative Jewish family, as the other sister survives as a very unconventional single mom navigating alone as an Illegal immigrant. Their disparate lifestyles lead to a lot of conflict but at the same time describes the way they each find community and companionship.
An enjoyable story about sisters, motherhood, and identity.
Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
DRC from Edelweiss and S&S/Summit Books / Simon & Schuster
Sonia is a single mother living in LA. She grew up in Budapest, but because her father was a diplomat, she spent three years in Washington DC. Her older sister, Rina, meets and marries a man while in DC and she doesn’t return to Budapest with the family. She moves with her husband to LA. Sonia, at 18, comes to visit and also doesn’t return to Budapest. Instead she finds herself pregnant. She befriends Anthony and, afraid of being deported, she gets him to marry her so she can remain in the US. They part and go their own ways after the ceremony. Sonia has never really told her daughter anything about her father, but now that Mila is in 6th grade, there are questions. She feels isolated not knowing her past history. Mila takes it upon herself to find him, trolling her mother’s email history, and set up a meeting. Little does Mila know what she has set in motion.
A heartwarming story about family, relationships, and identity.
Sonia is a single mother living in LA. She grew up in Budapest, but because her father was a diplomat, she spent three years in Washington DC. Her older sister, Rina, meets and marries a man while in DC and she doesn’t return to Budapest with the family. She moves with her husband to LA. Sonia, at 18, comes to visit and also doesn’t return to Budapest. Instead she finds herself pregnant. She befriends Anthony and, afraid of being deported, she gets him to marry her so she can remain in the US. They part and go their own ways after the ceremony. Sonia has never really told her daughter anything about her father, but now that Mila is in 6th grade, there are questions. She feels isolated not knowing her past history. Mila takes it upon herself to find him, trolling her mother’s email history, and set up a meeting. Little does Mila know what she has set in motion.
A heartwarming story about family, relationships, and identity.
February 13, 2026
I love mother/daughter stories and this was a great one. Liked the way that Fabriczki weaved the story with the time jumps and gave us glimpses of how we arrived at present day.
Really enjoyed learning a bit about Hungary's history, and how it shaped the lives of Sonia's family.
Sonia and Mila were an interesting duo: The banter and love between them, and so much miscommunication, which led to some interesting twists in the story.
This was a great debut and will be looking forward to reading more from this author in the future.
Thank you to S&S/Summit Books and the author for providing a free copy of this book through NetGalley.
Really enjoyed learning a bit about Hungary's history, and how it shaped the lives of Sonia's family.
Sonia and Mila were an interesting duo: The banter and love between them, and so much miscommunication, which led to some interesting twists in the story.
This was a great debut and will be looking forward to reading more from this author in the future.
Thank you to S&S/Summit Books and the author for providing a free copy of this book through NetGalley.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Many thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for allowing me to preview this book. I enjoyed it book quite a bit, although the ending left me wanting a little bit more. The characters were complex and interesting. As a retired teacher, I smiled at the scenes set in school. I think this book will do well on the market.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews