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  • Published: 7 May 2024
  • ISBN: 9781529907544
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $22.99

Black & White





Discover the pacey and provocative backlist novel about mothers and daughters from the New York Times bestselling author of Signal Fires

Clara’s mother is famous for the nude portraits she took of Clara throughout her childhood.

Clara has spent her entire adult life pulling away from her mother. At age eighteen, sick of her notoriety as 'the girl in the pictures', Clara fled New York City, settling and making her own family in small-town Maine. But years later, when her mother reaches out from her deathbed, Clara suddenly finds herself drawn back to the past she thought she had escaped.

From the beloved author of SIGNAL FIRES and FAMILY HISTORY, BLACK & WHITE is a moving love letter to those familial bonds that both bruise and make you in equal measure.

‘Spellbinding...provocative, hypnotic’ USA Today
‘Uncompromising storytelling’ Los Angeles Times
‘Ambitious…thrilling’ TimeOut New York

  • Published: 7 May 2024
  • ISBN: 9781529907544
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Dani Shapiro

Dani Shapiro is the author of the instant New York Times bestselling memoir, Inheritance. Her other books include the memoirs Hourglass, Still Writing, Devotion and Slow Motion, and five novels including Black & White and Family History. In February of 2019, Dani launched an original podcast, Family Secrets, in collaboration with iHeartMedia. An iTunes Top 10 podcast, the series features stories from guests who - like Dani - have uncovered life-altering and long-hidden secrets from their past. Along with teaching writing workshops around the world, Dani has taught at Columbia and New York University, and is the cofounder of Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. Find her at danishapiro.com.

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Praise for Black & White

Spellbinding...provocative, hypnotic...spot-on authentic. A cool depiction of a mother and daughter's fraught and fiery relationship

USA Today

Enthralling, fast-paced and a great read.

The Miami Herald

Uncompromising storytelling.... The ideas Shapiro grapples with resonate, and she raises trenchant and enduring questions that resist easy answers

Los Angeles Times

Universal dilemmas face us all, and it is the novelist's job to breathe life into them one way or another, and this is something Shapiro does very well indeed

New York Times Book Review

The novel offers some fine insights into marriage, the making of art and the often difficult mother-daughter dynamic

Publishers Weekly

Shapiro portrays [this family] with compassion and humanity - nobody's really a villain, though all of her characters are flawed... Black & White is really about the shades of grey in human relationships

Bookpage

Shapiro does something rather thrilling with her story: she gets it just right.

Washington Post

Oprah’s Book Club readers or fans of Jodi Picoult will enjoy this psychologically gripping book

Library Journal

Shapiro's central characters are expertly rendered

Elle Magazine

[Shapiro] writes with an economy that draws the reader into the dramatic fray of the scenes

Providence Journal

Searing . . . Shapiro forages a remarkably clear-eyed path through the issues at hand

Dallas Morning News

Thought-provoking . . . Black & White explores the web of family, obligation, and trust. And reveals life’s shades of gray

Daily Candy

Trenchant and enduring

Los Angeles Times Book Review

Mothers and daughters is a naturally absorbing subject and in Black & White, Shapiro shapes an intriguing dilemma that heightens into a moving story

New York Daily News

The extraordinary Dani Shapiro (Family History and Slow Motion) pushes mother-daughter boundaries to the limit in a blistering novel about art and ambition

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