Journalist and parenting columnist Sophie Brickman is one of our most incisive chroniclers of modern parenting. Her eye-opening 2021 book Baby, Unplugged explored the impact of technology on today’s kids and parents, and her witty observations on modern life have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and her regular column with The Guardian.
Now in her razor-sharp debut novel PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS, Brickman delivers a wickedly funny satire and “wildly recognizable portrait of parenting” (Emily Oster) that will prove irresistible to fans of novels like Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Fleishman Is In Trouble.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS introduces us to Annie Lewin, a Manhattan mother who’s quickly reaching the end of her rope navigating the rat race of NYC parenting. With three young children and a workaholic husband, Annie is unspooling just as the vicious competition for spots in the city’s kindergartens is heating up. As a New York Times journalist-turned-parenting-advice-columnist for an internet start-up, Annie can’t help but judge the insanity of it all—even as she finds herself going to impossible lengths to secure the best spot for her own son. Her intensifying rivalry with Belinda Brenner—a hotshot divorce lawyer with perfectly curated bento box lunches, an effortlessly chic Instagram page, and a son who’s been studying Suzuki violin seemingly since birth—pushes Annie even further to the brink.
Soon a raw, unhinged version of Annie emerges—and it is great for driving clicks on her advice column. But when Annie commits a ghastly social faux pas that goes viral, she’s forced to confront the question glaring her in the face: is she really any better than the cutthroat preschool parents she always judged?
Inventively incorporating emails, group texts, advice columns, newspaper profiles, and more, PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS is brutally witty and richly observed, perfectly capturing the minefield of modern motherhood. But beneath its fast-paced, satirical veneer, Brickman gives us a fresh, open-hearted, all-too-real take on what it means to be a parent—fierce love, craziness, and all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sophie Brickman is a writer, reporter, and editor who has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Elle, Saveur, The Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle, and other outlets. Her work has also appeared in the Best Food Writing and the Best American Science Writing anthologies. Her first book, Baby, Unplugged, about the intersection of technology and parenting, received a starred Publishers Weekly review and landed her a spot on Good Morning America. Plays Well with Others is her first novel. She lives in New York City with her husband and three children.