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The Avenue
The Avenue is a novel about a single mother who works at an antique store – in 2004 before the stock market crash, when the antique stores had just started popping up everywhere in the increasingly white-on-white gentrified Hampden, Baltimore. It’s about wanting a better world and living in this one. It’s about a mango margarita and a record store guy. It’s about feeling like shit and selling expensive things. It’s about value, matter, and objects changing hands.
From groundbreaking zinester and essayist China Martens comes a raw, luminous debut novel that transforms the gritty everyday of working-class Baltimore into something transcendent. Following Mattie, a thirty-eight-year-old single mom navigating precarious employment, teenage chaos, and heartbreak on The Avenue, Martens crafts an unflinching portrait of survival that pulses with magic and beauty.
Part love story, part social commentary, The Avenue captures the razor-thin balance between desire and necessity as Mattie moves from grocery store salad bar to antique shop, all while wrestling with her daughter's troubled relationship and her own devastating affair with the magnetic record store owner who becomes both salvation and ruin.
From groundbreaking zinester and essayist China Martens comes a raw, luminous debut novel that transforms the gritty everyday of working-class Baltimore into something transcendent. Following Mattie, a thirty-eight-year-old single mom navigating precarious employment, teenage chaos, and heartbreak on The Avenue, Martens crafts an unflinching portrait of survival that pulses with magic and beauty.
Part love story, part social commentary, The Avenue captures the razor-thin balance between desire and necessity as Mattie moves from grocery store salad bar to antique shop, all while wrestling with her daughter's troubled relationship and her own devastating affair with the magnetic record store owner who becomes both salvation and ruin.
100 pages, Paperback
Published August 19, 2025
6 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 17, 2026
I picked up this book because I know the author! Which is such a strange magical treat, to know an author! More specifically, I know China from the internet and sometimes I say hi to her on the street, but only on the days when I'm feeling confident, when I know my voice will carry. But more than knowing her, I know her writing - on the internet, anyway - her voice is so sweet and whimsical, she writes in plain language about her labyrinthine thoughts. She thinks about the small things that break her heart and it just so happens that the small things that break her heart also tend to break mine and so I was very excited to read her book.
First of all, you should read this book if you love a great beginning and a great end. The last line of the first paragraph of this book is a knock out and the last line of the whole book - also a knock out. What China accomplishes within the first ten seconds when it comes to character and plot is amazing - and heart breaking in the tiniest way. And what China says in the last sentence of the book, most of us will spend a lifetime trying to say with much less resolve. And while I'm at it, this book also has a perfect chapter! Part two, chapter 3 is a perfect chapter. "How things become desired."
Essentially, this book is about enjoying love, especially when it's not good enough - whether you’re trying to love or be loved by a man, a child, a society, a job or a chair. You should read this book if you like queer writing. Not queer as in, "I kissed a girl," but queer as in sex, debasement, self-hatred, breast feeding, taboo and homeless youth. You should read this book if you've ever made poetry out of a knick knack or a shitty lover. You should read this book if you love walking down city streets on the East Coast of the US and wondering not so much about what you can buy in the stores there, but much more about the buildings the stores are in and the relationships between the people who run the stores and what stores were there before the one you're browsing. Finally, you should *not* read this book if you want a thrilling plot, a perfect hero or a satisfying love story of any kind.
Highlights for me include the real way China writes the experience of race and money and liberation -- and the time travel of it all. This book was written 20 years ago and there is something really beautiful about reading it today, the way this old story becomes new again in my hands, just like the best antiques do.
First of all, you should read this book if you love a great beginning and a great end. The last line of the first paragraph of this book is a knock out and the last line of the whole book - also a knock out. What China accomplishes within the first ten seconds when it comes to character and plot is amazing - and heart breaking in the tiniest way. And what China says in the last sentence of the book, most of us will spend a lifetime trying to say with much less resolve. And while I'm at it, this book also has a perfect chapter! Part two, chapter 3 is a perfect chapter. "How things become desired."
Essentially, this book is about enjoying love, especially when it's not good enough - whether you’re trying to love or be loved by a man, a child, a society, a job or a chair. You should read this book if you like queer writing. Not queer as in, "I kissed a girl," but queer as in sex, debasement, self-hatred, breast feeding, taboo and homeless youth. You should read this book if you've ever made poetry out of a knick knack or a shitty lover. You should read this book if you love walking down city streets on the East Coast of the US and wondering not so much about what you can buy in the stores there, but much more about the buildings the stores are in and the relationships between the people who run the stores and what stores were there before the one you're browsing. Finally, you should *not* read this book if you want a thrilling plot, a perfect hero or a satisfying love story of any kind.
Highlights for me include the real way China writes the experience of race and money and liberation -- and the time travel of it all. This book was written 20 years ago and there is something really beautiful about reading it today, the way this old story becomes new again in my hands, just like the best antiques do.
December 19, 2025
China MartensSo wonderful, the specific mindscape of this narrator, her world, so carefully considered. I love how she thinks, and how it ends up on the page.
p. 11: (I can remember this kind of childhood longing so well.)
“So that’s kinda the story of that. But I feel compelled to tell you one or two more things about me. I was in love with Dawn Dolls as a child. I always loved dolls and stuffed animals and movies and books and had a room full of things, but these Dawn Dolls were especially wonderful. They were smaller than my Malibu Barbies. They were these little fantastic ‘60s mod dolls. I think they were models. They had lots and lots of clothes. Things like miniskirts, white or black go-go boots, vinyl raincoats, leopard fur belts and matching hats. They had blue eye shadow, fake eyelashes that stuck out, not painted on—great eyelashes—and straight long hair to their butts. I wished I had hair like that. My favorites were Angie the brunette and Gloria the red head. I’ve never really cared for blondes. So I had one of each, but not Dale the Black doll with short hair, and I had a little Evel Knievel figure, who I knew was cheesy even then with his painted on hair, but who was the right size to be a boyfriend. That was really important. But I wanted more. I wanted more clothes for my Dawn Dolls. And I think the fact that I never saw them in a store again—they didn’t last too long on the market or something—made me long to see them again. So one night I had a dream there were all these Dawn Dolls and accessories in this toy store and I was so excited! I didn’t have any money, though. So I was stealing them, putting everything in my pockets, trying to get out the store. It was a passionate dream. It was real. I mean, I made a moral choice in that dream and sometimes dreams are for real. I would have done anything to get more Dawn Dolls and accessories. When I woke up empty handed I was so sad. I still remember my childish desire for ‘something’ strongly to this day. To collect the rare and desired.”
p. 17: (feeding rats): “Who knew that rats could be so sweet? When she lost interest in them I took them on as my pets. She became older and embarrassed of them, saw them as disgusting.
Houdini was the best one. She loved for me to pet her more than she loved even to eat. She closed her eyes with pleasure and clicked her teeth when I pet her head. That’s do say she loved me a lot, for there is not much most rats like better than eating. To feed tiny creatures is a joy. To pass them a grape between the bars and see their tiny hands take it with greedy pleasure, as if holding a watermelon.”
p. 11: (I can remember this kind of childhood longing so well.)
“So that’s kinda the story of that. But I feel compelled to tell you one or two more things about me. I was in love with Dawn Dolls as a child. I always loved dolls and stuffed animals and movies and books and had a room full of things, but these Dawn Dolls were especially wonderful. They were smaller than my Malibu Barbies. They were these little fantastic ‘60s mod dolls. I think they were models. They had lots and lots of clothes. Things like miniskirts, white or black go-go boots, vinyl raincoats, leopard fur belts and matching hats. They had blue eye shadow, fake eyelashes that stuck out, not painted on—great eyelashes—and straight long hair to their butts. I wished I had hair like that. My favorites were Angie the brunette and Gloria the red head. I’ve never really cared for blondes. So I had one of each, but not Dale the Black doll with short hair, and I had a little Evel Knievel figure, who I knew was cheesy even then with his painted on hair, but who was the right size to be a boyfriend. That was really important. But I wanted more. I wanted more clothes for my Dawn Dolls. And I think the fact that I never saw them in a store again—they didn’t last too long on the market or something—made me long to see them again. So one night I had a dream there were all these Dawn Dolls and accessories in this toy store and I was so excited! I didn’t have any money, though. So I was stealing them, putting everything in my pockets, trying to get out the store. It was a passionate dream. It was real. I mean, I made a moral choice in that dream and sometimes dreams are for real. I would have done anything to get more Dawn Dolls and accessories. When I woke up empty handed I was so sad. I still remember my childish desire for ‘something’ strongly to this day. To collect the rare and desired.”
p. 17: (feeding rats): “Who knew that rats could be so sweet? When she lost interest in them I took them on as my pets. She became older and embarrassed of them, saw them as disgusting.
Houdini was the best one. She loved for me to pet her more than she loved even to eat. She closed her eyes with pleasure and clicked her teeth when I pet her head. That’s do say she loved me a lot, for there is not much most rats like better than eating. To feed tiny creatures is a joy. To pass them a grape between the bars and see their tiny hands take it with greedy pleasure, as if holding a watermelon.”
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February 16, 2026Read for a book club, but I didn't get into it.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews