Sunday's on the Phone to Monday: A Novel

The Royal Tenenbaums meets J. D. Salinger in this “sharply observed and bittersweet family romance with a rock ’n’ roll heart” (Elle).

Claudio and Mathilde Simone, once romantic bohemians hopelessly enamored with each other, find themselves nestled in domesticity in New York, running a struggling vinyl record store and parenting three daughters as best they can: Natasha, an overachieving prodigy; sensitive Lucy, with her debilitating heart condition; and Carly, adopted from China and quietly fixated on her true origins.

With prose that is as keen and illuminating as it is whimsical and luminous, debut novelist Christine Reilly tells the unusual love story of this family. Poignant and humane, Sunday’s on the Phone to Monday is a deft exploration of the tender ties that bind families together, even as they threaten to tear them apart.

Christine Reilly lives in New York City. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Dalton School, and Collegiate School. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University and her Master’s degree in writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Sunday’s on the Phone to Monday is her first novel.

ISBN: 9781501116889
Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: April 18, 2017

“Sunday’s on the Phone to Monday reveals how trouble, when visited upon a loving family, can be transformed—if imperfectly—by curiosity, empathy, and imagination. We’re in a poet’s hands; every sentence here crackles with electric vitality. This is a unique and big-hearted novel.”"Reilly’s debut novel explores how a love evolves as responsibilities mount for two parents with three very different daughters…deft in her characterizations…full of imaginative anecdotes and vibrant details…Reilly’s first novel is touching and nostalgic."Sunday’s on the Phone to Monday is an energetic, captivating, and lyrical debut. Here is a writer with a wonderfully eccentric way of seeing the world, weaving a family story both whimsical and profound, in which each character is dealt with tenderly, and each sentence is an adventure. Christine Reilly is a talent to watch."Reminiscent of Lorrie Moore, and J.D. Salinger, and “Mr and Mrs Bridge,” Sunday's on the Phone to Monday is a beautiful thing, the kind of book a poet would dream a novel was.""Sunday’s on the Phone to Monday is a prismatic and moving exploration of how the past can haunt, motivate, and ultimately heal us—or in the words of Natasha Simone, “Memory can be like medicine.” With great empathy and a keen eye for the offbeat detail, Christine Reilly depicts a family unique in its troubles but universal in its longing to overcome them. Reilly is masterful in her illumination of the inner lives of her characters."“With subtle genius and a wide-open heart, Christine Reilly invites us into a world that is at once strange and familiar. A stunning debut.""Sunday's on the Phone to Monday is a fantastic love letter to New York City. This is a multi-generational story of death and life, illness and wellness. Reilly is the undisputed master at spinning poetry into prose. Her words are arresting, poignant, and searingly optimistic."“A lyrical and poetic look at family, love, and loss.”This whimsical, bittersweet debut novel recalls the work of filmmaker Wes Anderson, both in subject (a complicated, tightknit family full of smart, worried people) and in style (full of quirky, impossible-to-ignore formal choices).Christine Reilly’s shimmering debut hurls us into the beating center of the Simone family, and our attachment is immediate and lasting. Both tender and dark, big-hearted and heart-breaking, Sunday’s on the Phone to Monday is a book you won’t forget, filled with quiet power and roaring truths."A compelling family tale rich in vivid and relatable struggles.""A sharply observed and bittersweet family romance with a rock ’n’ roll heart.... Reilly’s dreamy, slipstream style dazzles."“A fusion of a poet’s relentless focus on the possibilities of a single word with the novelist’s construction of imagined worlds.”--Kirkus