Clutch

"White Lotus with more sincerity and heart." --Los Angeles Times

"This story casts a smart, sociological eye on ambitious American women's experiences while also being a compulsive page-turner." --The Atlantic

A close-knit group of women navigate mid-life's biggest challenges--marriage, career, addiction--in this "sharp, funny, utterly engrossing" novel (Lynn Steger Strong)

Named a Best Book by The New York Times Book Review, People, Los Angeles Times, Alta Journal, Bustle, and more

Five friends, twenty years, one reunion trip. As undergrads, Gregg, Reba, Hillary, Bella, and Carson formed the kind of rare bond that college brochures promise--friendship that lasts a lifetime. Two decades later, the women are spread across the country but remain firmly tethered through their ever-unfurling group chat. They've made it through COVID and childbirth and midcareer challenges, but no one can anticipate what's coming down the pike.

The five women converge on Palm Springs for a long overdue reunion: Gregg, who has forged a path as a progressive Texas legislator, is facing a huge decision about her political future. Reba, who moved back to the Bay Area after decades away, is deep in IVF treatments while caring for her aging parents and navigating a San Francisco she hardly recognizes. Hillary's medical career in Chicago is going great--but at home, her husband's struggles with addiction have derailed their life. In New York City, Bella faces the biggest case in her career as a litigator while her home life crumbles around her, and across the river in Brooklyn, Carson is working on a new novel as well as forging a possible relationship with the father she's never met.

Twenty years into their shared friendship, the stakes are higher than ever, and they must help one another reconcile professional ambition with personal tumult. Clutch is a big, beautiful, and deeply absorbing novel that asks how much space and heart we can give to our friends and our families, and what space we can save for ourselves.

Emily Nemens is the author of the novels Clutch (Tin House/Zando, 2026), and The Cactus League (FSG, 2020), both of which were NYT Book Review Editor's Choice selections. Her stories and essays have appeared in BOMB, Story, Zyzzyva, n+1, and elsewhere; her illustrations have appeared in the New Yorker and in collaboration with Harvey Pekar. Nemens spent over a decade editing literary quarterlies, including leading the Paris Review and serving as coeditor and prose editor of the Southern Review. She teaches in the MFA program at Bennington College and lives in central New Jersey with her husband and dog.