A Literary Cocktail Hour- Very Cold People with Sarah Manguso

The Brattleboro Literary Festival invites you to join us on Friday, July 8, 2022, at 5:00 PM for our monthly virtual Literary Cocktail Hour with acclaimed novelist Sarah Manguso in conversation with Vermont author Makenna Goodman. Sarah’s new novel, Very Cold People, which takes place in the frozen, snow-padded town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is all she has ever known. But this is no picturesque New England. Once “home of the bean and the cod, where Lowells speak only to Cabots, and Cabots speak only to God,” by the tail end of the twentieth century it is an unforgiving place awash with secrets. Very Cold People tells Ruthie’s story through her eyes—this is her story. From the shame handed down by her immigrant forebears and indomitable mother, to the violences endured by her high school friends, each suffering a fate worse than the last. Part social commentary and part Gothic horror, Very Cold People is an ungilded portrait of girlhood at the crossroads of history and social class. In her highly anticipated debut novel, Sarah Manguso has produced a masterwork on how very cold places make for very cold people, and it takes a pitiless look at an all-American whiteness. She will be in conversation with Vermont writer Makenna Goodman.