From Clare Sestanovich the PEN Robert W. Bingham Prize nominee whose short stories received
instant acclaim ('Sparingly told evoked with lacerating intimacy . . . Extraordinary' -
Esquire) Ask Me Again is a debut novel about a young woman's coming of age in parallel with a
renegade male friend who challenges her beliefs and the course of her life. At sixteen Eva
meets Jamie by chance. She lives in middle-class South Brooklyn he comes from the super-rich
of upper Manhattan. She's observant cautious eager to seem normal he's curious bold full
of mysteries. She keeps a keen intelligence under wraps his eccentric brilliance is all but
impossible to repress. While Eva welcomes Jamie into her family's embrace he avoids going home
with little in common they are drawn together in a deep friendship. As Eva goes off to an
elite college and falls in and out of love Jamie drops out of school and joins the Occupy Wall
Street movement. Eva so often trapped by self-doubt is both awed and repelled by the strength
of Jamie's convictions. Carried forcefully along by Sestanovich's highly observant
butterfly-pinning prose these two characters pulled into separate spheres circle the same
questions: how to define their values and find their purpose how to create a sense of self
while discovering what they owe to society and to the cause of justice. The geometry of their
platonic love leads us on a surprising journey of intimacy across time - exposing the alchemy
of connection of the relationships that can define who we are and can even change us and the
possible futures we might not have imagined for ourselves.
