Mine and Yours: A Novel

A razor-sharp, big-hearted debut in which two sisters—one an unlikely reality TV producer, the other hurtling ambivalently toward parenthood—might teach each other to be happy if only they can forgive each other first.

"A brilliant, daring debut.”—Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

It’s 2013, and one-time women’s and gender studies major Alison Klausner is, somehow—not for any reason her sister, Charlotte, can begin to accept—a producer on the sexist reality dating show The Catch. It’s as though Ali has constructed her life in order to be as cynical about both love and her fellow man as possible.

But if Ali is cynical about love, well, maybe Charlotte has only herself to blame: because what happiness has love brought Charlotte? To Ali, it's plain that her sister is depressed and adrift, utterly subsumed in her marriage to her gallingly competent college girlfriend, Elaine. Not that Charlotte would ever admit to any of it.

Into Ali’s world comes Will, the new lead of The Catch and maybe a genuinely good guy. Charged with manipulating Will for television, Ali soon develops feelings for him as dangerous as they are humiliating, an attraction that will threaten both her job and her sense of self. Meanwhile, under the mounting pressure of her wife’s desire for a baby, Charlotte finds herself marching toward both parenthood and the recognition that she’s been more lost than she knew.

Witty, sexy, and poignant, Mine and Yours is a winning homage to Austen’s Sense and Sensibility for the age of reality TV and IVF, a novel about sisterhood and about how falling in love can lead us not just away from but back toward our families.