Newfangled: A Novel

by Debra Monroe

From award-winning writer Debra Monroe comes a funny and poignant story of a woman's quest to find a physical and emotional home.
Maddie, a refugee from two marriages, wanders from place to place seeking new options and new connections. She eventually settles in a cozy old neighborhood in Tucson, gets a job, and contemplates her life so a mother who's been missing for two decades, a father she rarely sees, two sisters married to the same men for fifteen years, and a circle of quirky, spiteful, but loyal friends. Just as she's trying to decide whether she's actually "at home" in Tucson, she receives a phone call that sends her on another journey -- one that takes her both physically and emotionally into the past and affords her a glimpse of a newfangled future.

304 pages, Paperback

First published February 11, 1998

About the author

Debra Monroe is the author of four books of fiction, two memoirs, a textbook, a collection of essays.

Her first book The Source of Trouble was acclaimed as a “fierce debut” that presents “ever-hopeful lost souls with engaging humor and sympathy” (Kirkus Reviews). Her second book of stories A Wild, Cold State was described by The Boston Globe as “fine and funky, marbled with warmth and romantic confusion, but not a hint of sentimentality.” The Washington Post called her first novel “rangy, thoughtful, ambitious, and widely, wildly knowledgeable.” Shambles was praised by the Texas Observer as “a novel of graceful ease and substance.” Her first memoir On the Outskirts of Normal was published to national acclaim. Her second memoir My Unsentimental Education was described by the Chicago Tribune as "a heady rush of adventure, optimism, and fearlessness. Her book of essays It Takes a Worried Woman was described by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune as "edgy, nervy, anxious, alloyed by intellect, insight and humor."

Her books have won many awards, including the Flannery O’Connor Award, Borders Bookstore New Frontiers Award, The Barnes and Noble Book Award, and several best book of the season or year citations, including in O Magazine, Elle, Vanity Fair, and Southern Living.

Reviews

[Betsy]

It's tough to review a first novel so I'm not giving it a star rating. This is a great book, just waiting for its author's writing skills to catch up. Notes: (a) I read an ARC that I picked up in a used book store, so it's not the final, published edition. (b) It was written in 1998 and was just the first of several novels that Debra Monroe has written.

I absolutely loved Debra Monroe's characters in Newfangled. Every single one of them was a very quirky individual, but also a very real one. I could imagine meeting Clima or Lalo or Laree. They are all interesting; there's not a stereotype among them. (Special shout-out to Clima - Monroe made me smile every time Clima appeared.)

As someone who grew up with a lot of absent family members, Maidie's backstory also felt real. The scene where her mother tells the class about her life in Madagascar by bringing a bottle of vanilla, a pepper shaker and a can of coffee struck me as particularly funny-sad.

The writing: Newfangled is divided into 3 sections, "Ready", "Set" and "Go". For all of "Ready" and about half of "Go", nothing happened as Maidie endlessly rehashed how she was always moving but going nowhere. About halfway through "Set", though, an plot started up that it was as odd but believable as the characters. I'm really glad I stuck it out and I was sorry it ended.

I'm looking forward to reading Debra Monroe's more recent novels. I think, like Maidie herself, Newfangled showed a great author waiting for her writing experience to catch up with her imagination.

[Graham Oliver]

I'd be pretty upset with whoever did the back cover, they misspelled the main character's name.

Good book. Great characters, plot, etc. It wanders quite a bit more than Shambles, and Shambles is definitely in the same vein but feels more refined. Interesting to see Monroe's path from her first novel to her latest novel and memoir, also interesting to see the links between this novel and her own life as depicted in the memoir.

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

I mark this as read, but I gave up after 50 pages. The writing was good, but I didn't care about the characters. I kept feeling like I'd been reading forever... Then realized I'd only made it another 10 pages.