Please join us to celebrate the launch of Angela Brown’s Olivia Strauss is Running Out of Time! The event will begin at 6:30pm and end at 8:00pm. A reading from Angela Brown will take place at 7:00pm.
About the Author:
Angela Brown’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, Real Simple, and other publications. She holds an MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Angela lives in New Jersey with her husband and two young children, where she is currently at work on her second novel.
About the Novel:
“If you knew the date when you would die, would you change the way you live?” In her winning, often hilarious, and deeply felt debut, OLIVIA STRAUSS IS RUNNING OUT OF TIME (Little A; January 1, 2024), novelist Angela Brown asks this question as she explores the complexities of aging, adult friendships, reinvention, and learning to live well.
Olivia Strauss is turning 39. Not a major milestone and no midlife crisis in sight, she assumes she has decades to check the unchecked boxes of her life’s to-do list. Olivia still considers herself to be young despite the occasionally catty ageist comments from the other neighborhood moms who gather to gossip and sell beauty products over cold glasses of wine at their kitchen islands. And she’s mostly content in the stable home shared with her college sweetheart and their young son.
That is until Olivia’s best friend—eccentric, single, city-dwelling Marian, who is living the life Olivia still covets—gives her an unusual birthday present that turns both of their lives upside down: a visit to a trendy wellness clinic for a state-of-the-art genetic test that can predict the exact date of one’s death. The test—real or not—forces Olivia to examine her life and ask herself what she might do differently if her time were to end sooner than expected.
Olivia takes inventory of her as yet unfinished dreams and fast tracks some of them, reigniting the romantic spark in her marriage, spending more quality time with her son, switching careers, learning to cook, and even dyeing her hair a bright bohemian pink.
OLIVIA STRAUSS IS RUNNING OUT OF TIME is a heartfelt comedy of errors about the challenges of aging, embracing the moment, and living our best lives. When confronted with her own ‘expiration date,’ Olivia is forced to stop making excuses and face one life-changing fact: no matter your age, there is always time to start over.
In a personal twist, several years ago Brown, whose writing has appeared in Real Simple and the New York Times, found herself wondering what 40 ‘should’ look like. Soon after, covid closed down the world and offered her the opportunity to re-engage her own dream of becoming a writer. She gave herself one year to finish a novel before her 40th birthday. And OLIVIA STRAUSS was born! Readers of Maria Semple’s Today Will Be Different or Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine will flock to Olivia and her fellow cast of quirky characters.