All This Could Be Different

From a brilliant new voice comes an electrifying novel of a young immigrant building a life for herself — a warm, dazzling, and profound saga of queer love, friendship, work, and precarity in 21st-century America 

“Sarah Thankam Mathews’ prose is undeniable.”  -  Raven Leilani, author of Luster

Graduating into the long maw of an American recession, Sneha is one of the fortunate ones. She's moved to Milwaukee for an entry-level corporate job that, gruelling as it may be, is the key that unlocks every door: she can pick up the tab at dinner with her new friend Tig, get her college buddy Thom hired alongside her, & send money to her parents back in India. She begins dating women - soon developing a burning crush on Marina, a beguiling & beautiful dancer who always seems just out of reach.  But before long, trouble arrives. Painful secrets rear their heads; jobs go off the rails; evictions loom. 

"Rarely is dialogue rendered so accurately... In her prose, Mathews can be deeply moving at the same time that she is funny; she dips into slang in a way that feels lyrical and rhythmic... If the novel seems to drag toward the end, this feels like a small, stingy criticism for a book that is, as a whole, beautifully written, lusciously felt, and marvellously envisioned... Resplendent with intelligence, wit, and feeling."  -  Kirkus Review

A beautiful and capacious novel rendered in singular, unforgettable prose, All This Could Be Different is a wise, tender, and riveting group portrait of young people forging love and community amidst struggle, and a moving story of one immigrant’s journey to make her home in the world.