Like a hanging mobile, the stories in The New Low move around each other, creating ever-changing insights between its characters, each of whom struggle with identity, addiction, judgments, and life's contradictions.
“Jennifer Lewis writes authentically, and somewhat hilariously, to the page-turning rhythms of a veteran writer’s anxious and observant mind. Her stories of middle-aged (eeeek!) awakening are layered, self-aware, and relatable. The vulnerability Lewis exhibits in her exploration of the body as keeper of trauma and giver of life offers us a place to take off our bra, unzip our pants, and exhale in unison. A hybrid collection of literary fiction sprinkled with some literary nonfiction, every one of these short stories is a window into all of our many complicated and imperfect selves.”
— KIMBERLY REYES, author of Vanishing Point
“With embodied and incisive prose, Jennifer Lewis zooms into the moments where we catch ourselves becoming human. She spotlights the singularity of universal experiences — watching a loved one slip away, losing control of bodily agency, feeling at once not enough and too much— and takes us to the place where empathy blooms.”
— Christine No, author of Whatever Love Means
The stories in Jennifer Lewis' collection, The New Low, thrum at the intersections of motherhood, individuality and desire. Curious, passionate, and hungry, characters in these often interconnecting stories are unafraid to pursue their inherent longings, even the ones they'd forgotten they harbor. Whether set inside a C-section procedure or city bars, Lewis renders her scenes with a hot and natural urgency that makes you want to keep on reading. And then read again.
— Preeti Vangani, author of Mother Tongue Apologize
“A magnificent debut collection! The interconnected characters in The New Low hit the human default motherlode for those of us who can’t quite get things right.
Jennifer Lewis’s characters are beginning to slip through the cracks of life—and although we don’t know how far they’ll fall, we get to meet them on the cusp of several different life edges: desire edges, aging edges, motherhood and womanhood edges, alcohol edges, and death edges. We are left wondering if they may or may not transcend their situations. Sometimes that means someone has an affair, other times that means someone dies or comes back to life. Women and men float in and out of the pages and in and out of each other’s stories; yet none of the stories ‘resolve’ the questions—just like in life.”
— Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Thrust: A Novel