Brass by Xhenet Aliu

BRASS by Xhenet Aliu is a new novel that I originally thought might work for Junior Theme because it deals with the American Dream. It’s the parallel stories of a mother and daughter: Elsie, a young girl desperate to leave Waterbury, Connecticut in the mid-1990s, but who ends up pregnant; and Luljeta who seventeen years later is searching for the father she never knew. After a look at a preview copy of BRASS, however, I feel like the language, some scenes, and structure (multiple narrators) is intended for more mature readers. Booklist said, “Advanced YA readers will relish the pouncing wit and sexual candor of young Elsie and Luljeta, as well as their nearly hopeless battles to boost themselves into a better world.” That’s very apt; as a debut effort, I found BRASS to be extremely clever (“… my mother slumping over the assembly line at the Peter Paul Mounds and Almond Joy factory down the street in Naugatuck, where she sometimes felt like a nut but more often she felt like a highball.”), but overly concerned with describing the sexual lives of the characters. BRASS received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus and Library Journal.