Symphony in Q: A Novel

From the national bestselling and acclaimed author of Asymmetry, a novel about a woman at the dawn of motherhood reckoning with her father, “alternative facts,” and the American inheritance.

An American journalist living in Milan, Rosey is pregnant and waiting alone in an Italian hospital for an emergency induction. Paging through a history of postwar Europe, she finds herself considering the forces that have shaped her: family, chance, ambition, and the country she left behind. Most of all, she thinks about her father.

Billy Harkness is a gun-collecting survivalist increasingly in thrall to conspiracy theories. When Rosey leaves their small New England hometown for college, the gap between their respective realities widens. After graduating with a degree in music, Rosey takes a job fact-checking for a prestigious magazine in New York, where she meets the Englishman she will marry and follow abroad. In Europe, she becomes an investigative reporter, writing about the local American consulate, Italian gun laws, and an up-and-coming orchestra conductor. Meanwhile, the Age of Trump has begun, and Billy’s fixations intensify until tragedy lures Rosey home to confront both the man and the country that made her.

Spanning generations, continents, and an astonishing range of voices, Symphony in Q traces the stubborn bond between a father and daughter and examines our relationship with truth at the personal, political, and artistic levels. What emerges is a portrait not only of a polarized family but also of a riven nation that often but not always makes good on its promises.

Brilliant, funny, tender, and unsparing, Symphony in Q is a major work from one of the most original writers of her generation—a novel about what we inherit, what we reject, and the viability of modern Americans’ dreams.