Eleanor Henderson (!) reviews Us Fools in the New York Times Book Review

Andrew Limbong (!) interviews/ reviews on Us Fools for NPR

Molly Young (!) recommends Us Fools in The New York Times

Jane Smiley (!) reviews Us Fools for The Los Angeles Times

LitHub: “LitHub asks 5 authors 7 questions with no wrong answers.”

Write or Die: "35 Books We Can't Wait To Read: September 2024"

Sophia June of NYLON included Us Fools on her list of most-anticipated September books.

Adam Vitcavage included Us Fools on Debutiful's list of "10 noteworthy debut books to read this September." 

Sam Franzini included the book on Our Culture's list of  "21 Books We’re Excited to Read in September 2024."

“Us Fools makes Kirkus' list of the "Most Anticipated Books of the Fall”—Kirkus

“Us Fools makes Maris Kreizman's list of "this Fall’s Incredible Crop of Fiction”—Lit Hub

“Lange’s debut novel is a refreshingly sardonic take on the decaying ideal of the American dream, with an anti-capitalist tilt. At the end of it all, this is not just a brilliant bildungsroman: Like the classics that the Fareown sisters quote ad infinitum, it’s a lush, uncanny mythology itself. A wonderfully shrewd, surreal, and comical odyssey through a crumbling American landscape.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Lange’s lucid story digs deep into the bonds of family and the alliances that are formed and retained across time and despite changing circumstances. Readers will be captivated.”—Publisher’s Weekly

“In this tragicomic, intimate debut, two sisters, growing up on a farm in Illinois during a recession, trying to keep the realities of debt and disaster at bay by turning inward, or rather toward one another—but of course, in America, this can never work for long.” —Lit Hubs Most Anticipated Books of 2024

“You’ll have to preorder Us Fools, a debut novel by Nora Lange that comes out in September, but trust me, your future self will thank your present self!”— LitHub

"I loved every second and every sentence of this novel! Full of heart and dust and girlhood and brutality and love, these sisters immediately swept me up into their breakdowns, their dreams, their sagas." —Amali Gordon-Buxbaum, Books Are Magic (Brooklyn, NY)

"Homeschooled and extremely close, Joanne and Bernadette contemplate life’s predicaments in their bedroom while their parents evade debtors and try to keep their land during the 1980s farm crisis. Bernadette writes a portrait of her mentally unstable sister Joanne, who, among other things, jumped off of a roof when she was ten. Following in the steps of a psychotic female lineage, Joanne confronted the world’s problems with the eye of an anarchist; when the family moves from the bankrupt farm to the city, Joanne’s dangerously reckless behavior worsens." —Sonia Reppe, Stickney-Forest View Public Library

“A fever dream tale of two sisters growing up in the decaying farm land of our recent past. Lange's style is full of raw and biting prose which makes it impossible to put down. A reminder of the raw deal capitalism handed to American farmers and their families.”—Rosa Hernandez, Third Place Books (Seattle, WA)

“Set in the Midwest during the mid ’80s farm crisis, Us Fools by Nora Lange follows precocious sisters Jo and Bernie as they navigate small town farm life with their often drunk father and chain-smoking mother. Jo is dramatic and impulsive, while Bernie is the caretaker. Narrated by Bernie in diary-like short chapters and continuing up to 2009, Us Fools is a funny yet heartbreaking debut, I loved it!”—Caitlin Baker, Island Books (Mercer Island, WA)

“This story about two fiercely intelligent, ferocious, feral farm waifs suffering the effects of the 80's farm crisis is at turns outrageous, ponderous, and heartbreaking, but always somehow funny. There are so many ideas and concepts introduced it would take several readings to explore them all. A wonderous exploration of two sisters surviving America.”—Alana Haley, Schuler Books (Grand Rapids, MI)

“This is a novel of heartbreak and beauty, presided over by one of the most idiosyncratic and surprising comedic voices I’ve encountered in recent times. Lange’s narrator, the younger of two sisters, is the true joy of Us Fools, speaking directly to the reader in a deceptively casual voice that is witty and allusive and at the same manages to plumb the sadness hidden deep within our quotidian lives. In all, a smashing debut.” —T.C. Boyle, author of Blue Skies and Drop City

“There is something of the end of America in Nora Lange's portrait of a farming family on a wild and anfractuous path to the brink of collapse. At turns hallucinatory and ruminative, fans of Joy Williams will find a familiar in Lange’s sharp-witted prose.” —Amelia Gray, author of Isadora

“Us Fools is one of those special books that reorders the world and makes everything new again — language, family, history, fear, love.  Nora Lange writes with the precision of Joy Williams, and the heart of George Saunders, in a voice that is all her own. You won’t forget this novel.” —Daniel Alarcón, journalist, and author of The King is Always Above the People and War by Candlelight

“Nora Lange’s voice shines in this wonderful debut.” —Elif Batuman, author of Either/Or and The Idiot

“With wild dreams and tender considerations, Nora Lange’s Us Fools brings us that bond most tangled, mysterious, eternal and dazzlingly reflective: sisters. As farms and families spin, what center holds when the world lets go?” —Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book and The Seas  

“Midwest farm life in the 1980s gets an inimitable revision through the eyes of the brilliant and unsettling Fareown sisters — filled with insight, sex, and unpredictable action, Lange’s provocative debut dazzles and will be like nothing you’ve read this year.” —J. Ryan Stradal, author of Saturday Night At The Lakeside Supper Club and The Lager Queen Of Minnesota

“Past and present seep and bleed in this assured, richly ruminative, darkly funny debut. With exacting lyricism, Nora Lange chronicles the tumult and chaotic love between two unforgettable sisters. Us Fools is a marvel of brutal wit and wild charm—a brilliant, sweeping  chronicle of a singular American family.” —Kimberly King Parsons, author of We Were the Universe and Black Light

“Us Fools reimagines the intergenerational family saga as a gobsmacked midwestern modern gothic. This novel is an explosion of ideas and a feast of language—a crazy quilt of bafflement, history, love, and danger—made unforgettable by the central sisters Fareown, whose binary star guides us through the wild heartlands of Nora Lange’s matchless mind.” —Justin Taylor, author of Reboot and Riding with the Ghost

“Nora Lange's remarkably tender and moving Us Fools is a beautiful portrait of the parallel, intersecting, and occasionally derailing tracks of two sisters coming of age in an America as broken as ever. The backdrop is the Eighties Midwest farm crisis though Lange expertly weaves in classic literature, philosophy, and socioeconomics with a graceful touch, never heavy-handed in how she renders this sibling love story also a cautionary tale of all the innate impossibilities of capitalism in a golden age of consumerism. There is a resounding authenticity to Lange's novel that feels almost startling for a book wired mostly quietly. I think anyone who gets lost in these pages will find themselves haunted for life by Lange's truly singular and yet deeply, painfully, intimately American vision.”—Porochista Khakpour, author of Tehrangeles and The Brown Album

“Us Fools is a boisterous, irreverent, and moving novel about two sisters growing up in an America that doesn't much care for them or their midwestern farming family. With comic tenderness and with an unforgettable, ferocious voice, Nora Lange paints a remarkable portrait of connection and alienation, of love and heartbreak, and all points in between.” —Edan Lepucki, author of Time’s Mouth and Mothers Before

“Us Fools by Nora Lange is an epic-sized, gloriously-anarchic, blow-out adventure through recent American history. From the farm crisis of the 80’s and through the intellectual changes crossing into the new millennium, the novel follows the joys and heartbreaks of one farm family as it’s rocked through the wild, political, hilarious, weird, disturbing and occasionally comforting changes in American life. How are we supposed to survive as Americans anyway? Can we? I felt hints of Marilynn Robinson and David Foster Wallace here in this amazing work, and with its smart, rhapsodic language, it feels like Roberto Bolano’s baton has been passed to Nora Lange.” —Robin McLean, author of Get 'Em Young Treat 'Em Tough Tell 'Em Nothing and Pity the Beast

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Joanne and Bernadette Fareown are raised on their family farm in rural Illinois, keenly affected by their parents’ volatile relationship and mounting financial debt, haunted by the cursed history of the women in their family. Largely left to their own devices, the sisters educate themselves on Greek mythology, feminism, and Virginia Woolf, realizing they must find unique ways to cope in these antagonistic conditions, questioning the American Dream as the rest of the country abandons their community in crisis. 

As Jo and Bernie’s imaginative solutions for escape come up short against their parents’ realities, the family leaves their farm for Chicago, where Joanne—free-spirited, reckless, and unable to tame her inner violence—rebels in increasingly desperate ways. After her worst breakdown yet, Jo goes into exile in Deadhorse, Alaska, and it is up to Bernadette to use all she’s learned from her sister to revive a sense of hope against the backdrop of a failing world. 

With her debut novel Us Fools, forthcoming with Two Dollar Radio (September 17, 2024), Nora Lange has crafted a rambunctious, ambitious, and heart-rending portrait of two idiosyncratic sisters, determined to persevere despite the worst that capitalism and their circumstances has to throw at them.