Drinking Coffee Elsewhere [Paperback]

Chosen by John Updike as aToday ShowBook Club Pick.

Already an award-winning writer, ZZ Packer now shares with us her debut,Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Her impressive range and talent are abundantly evident: Packer dazzles with her command of language, surprising and delighting us with unexpected turns and indelible images, as she takes us into the lives of characters on the periphery, unsure of where they belong. We meet a Brownie troop of black girls who are confronted with a troop of white girls; a young man who goes with his father to the Million Man March and must decides where his allegiance lies; an international group of drifters in Japan, who are starving, unable to find work; a girl in a Baltimore ghetto who has dreams of the larger world she has seen only on the screens in the television store nearby, where the Lithuanian shopkeeper holds out hope for attaining his own American Dream.

With penetrating insight that belies her youth—she was only nineteen years old whenSeventeenmagazine printed her first published story—ZZ Packer helps us see the world with a clearer vision.Drinking Coffee Elsewhereis a striking performance—fresh, versatile, and captivating. It introduces us to an arresting and unforgettable new voice.

”A captivating eye for detail...a bold and often thrilling usage of language and style.”—San Francisco Chronicle

”This is the old-time religion of storytelling, although Packer’s prose supplies plenty of the edge and energy we expect from contemporary fiction.”—The New York Times Book Review

”A true cause for celebration for those of us who feel that fiction exists to crack the world open and again and inspire us with new love for it. Funny, fierce, verbally energetic, deeply compassionate—ZZ Packlƒ6