Elsie and Luljeta share the spotlight with an original look at life in Waterbury, Connecticut. Forget the image of quaint, pretty, New England houses with picket fences and a lovely town square. Elsie, the descendant of Lithuanian immigrants, has dreams of leaving the dying city that once boomed as the capital of the brass manufacturing business. Brass didn't change the lives of the immigrants, but it kept most of them afloat. Now, in the mid-nineties with jobs lost to globalization, Waterbury's blue-collar population is hard-pressed to make a subsistence wage.

Elsie works at the Betsy Ross Diner, scraping together tips to make it to her forever home of New York via college acceptance at NYU. Elsie has big dreams and is determined to leave Waterbury in her past along with her mother, and all the people she resents from high school to her co-workers at the Ross, including a tall, handsome cook from Albania named Bashkim. Elsie has no interest in Bashkin but his persistent line, “I swear to Allah, you are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen,” combined with the fact that he has a car wears her down.

The remainder of the novel comes in alternating chapters by Elise and her daughter, Luljeta, who is the product of the Elise-Bashkim hook up the back seat of his white Fiero. Elise finally leaves home and lives with Bashkim, but there isn't any happy ending, not for Elise or for her daughter Luljeta who appears as an angry seventeen-year-old, wanting more than her mother for a family. Luljeta is on a journey to find herself, to discover the other half of herself, hopefully in her father.

The struggle of both of these characters broke my heart. Elise mined the inner fear of my recalled young self, alone with a dilemma. Elise is a metaphor for the unbalanced scope of women without access to higher education or mentors to guide them there that exists in the USA. College wasn't an option for her mother, and things have not changed in twenty years. Elise did the best she could, but it could never be enough, not for her or her Lujeta. Elise did not have a husband to help her raise a child; she didn't want one. But even in this country being one half of a married couple is more stabilizing and offers a better outcome for a child than a single parent, especially for a woman. We like to think that all women who work hard can provide a better life for that child in the USA. It isn't necessarily so says Xhenet Aliu in her intense portrait of two women's struggle.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an e-ARC of this debut novel.

Elsie is a waitress at the Betsy Ross Diner in Waterbury, Connecticut. The old brass factory had shut down, so most of the people remaining in the town are poor and with few options. All Elsie can really do is wait tables for the change she gets for tips, hoping to one day move away. Bashkim is the Albanian line cook at the diner, and they fall into a relationship even though she knows he has a wife in Albania. It doesn't feel real until she becomes pregnant, and all of his schemes don't seem to amount to anything. Seventeen years later, Elsie's daughter Luljeta is rejected from NYU and suspended from school on the same day. It makes her feel trapped in Waterbury with her mother, and suddenly the father she never knew seems like the way to discover who she should be.

The story moves a little slowly at first, with Elsie's first-person narrative as the primary thread and then Luljeta's second-person narrative picking up after a while. We see how quickly Elsie can fall in love and justify things to herself, especially when she sees little future and few options. She settles more than anything else, even if she doesn't see it that way, and others around her are the main agitators in her life. Her actions are more reactions, and she acknowledges that she doesn't want to make major decisions. Luljeta, on the other hand, has always done what was expected of her and has always been what others saw in her. The second person narrative for her is an interesting choice because we become her and are distanced at the same time, which is how Luljeta feels. She feels like an outsider in her own family because she knows nothing about her biological father, and feels just as trapped as Elsie does. There's a sadness that permeates their lives, because they keep reaching for something else to have meaning, only to realize that they have each other in the end.

The American dream is difficult to find here, whether it's a recent immigrant or the descendant of immigrants. The hope of finding it never dies, even so.

19-year old Elsie, daughter of Lithuanian immigrants, has gotten involved with co-worker Albanian line cook Bashkim who calls her ‘dum dum’ yet gives hope to this naive girl for a future together. His insincere compliments, casual hook-ups in a parking lot and the fact that he’s already married do not bode well for this relationship. Nor does the fact that Elsie finds herself pregnant.

Elsie’s path forward as a pregnant single mother alternates with daughter Luljeta, whose story begins 17 years later. Luljeta is also introduced as a teen, a bright student with dreams to graduate college and escape her dead-end town. I liked the alternating multigenerational story from mother/daughter perspectives. This book was in my thoughts even when I was not reading it, the characters’ tribulations stirring my emotions. Their experiences and cultural/class challenges in a changing world gave me pause as they are relevant today.

{My Thoughts}
What Worked For Me
Dual Structure – Brass is really two stories that intertwine. Sometimes that works, but other times it can be a hot mess. Xhenet Aliu masterfully made it work in her debut novel. Hers is actually two different coming-of-age stories, that of a mother (Elsie) grappling with her life after high school and her daughter (Luljeta) in a very similar position seventeen years later. Chapters alternate between the two as each struggles with the disconnect between dreams and reality. Their stories are their own, but the influences on them, remarkably similar.

Strong Writing – There is so much to like about Aliu’s writing in Brass, starting with how she handled her two characters. Chapters alternated between the two with Elsie’s told in first person and Lulu’s in the rarely used second person. Choosing different points of view kept each story fresh and its own. Elise especially had a wonderful tongue-in-cheek delivery, never taking herself or her disappointments too seriously. It may sound odd to praise a writer for knowing her characters, but Aliu really knew these women, making each heartbreakingly real. My highlights were copious.

“Why is she crying, why is she the one saying she’s sorry, when you’re the one who fucked up her life…? But even if you don’t understand it, you’re grateful that she’s able to say it, because it feels good to hear. It makes you think that maybe you don’t understand much of anything at all, which feels awful and a little hopeful at the same time.”

Parallel Lives – Elsie and Lulu each have their own stories, and yet their lives each unfold along parallel lines. Disappointment lies at the heart of both their lives: Lulu in her mother’s solitude, her own awkwardness, and in the father missing from her life; Elsie’s in her own mother, the man she chose to love, and the struggle to survive. Disappointment triggers rage in each young woman as they fight against the unfairness life can hold. And finally, Bashkim, boyfriend, father, absent, each woman longs for him knowing that doing so is a poor choice. He finds just the right spot in both Elsie’s and Lulu’s young hearts.

What Didn’t
Nothing – Almost everything about Brass worked well for me. I could nitpick and find a minor flaw or two, but honestly that’s exactly what it would be.

{The Final Assessment}
I like coming-of-age stories and Brass was the genre at its best. It was a treat to know both Elsie and Lulu as they struggled to move into adulthood. I especially liked that Lulu’s journey also included Elsie as a mother and protector. In Elsie, the story came full circle; in Lulu, we know her start, and can only hope for her future. Theirs is a touching story, beautifully written. I highly recommend Brass. Grade: A

Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher (via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest review.

Brass by Xhenet Aliu is a riveting debut novel. This book vacillates between Elsie and her daughter Lulu. Elsie is a waitress at the Betsy Ross Diner, and she is chasing the American Dream for her daughter. Lulu, facing disappointment like she's never known before, decides to defy her mother and discover the truth about her father. Aliu is going to be a writer to watch.

With the opening pages of “Brass”, I fell in love with Elsie. This sassy teenager is saving her waitress wages in a change jar to buy a “wicked coupe” that is going to take her the heck out of town. But it is impossibly hard to be 18 and be the "most beautiful girl" a man has ever seen. Loving Elsie made the heartbreak of her late pregnancy all the harder to read. An then, of course, I fell in love with Luljeta…. Brass is a heartbreakingly lovely book. What an astounding start to 2018.

Nicely written debut novel that explores the hopes and dreams of a mother and daughter when each was 17. Elsie and Lulu have had a tough time. Lulu's married-to-someone-else father, Bashkim, left. Elie's raised her on her own in a town where the economy is sagging. Lulu's a smart cookie but she's left adrift when her NYU application is rejected. This sets off an exploration of the past that hits a number of themes. The story is told from both perspectives, which enriches the experience. Thanks to the publisher for the arc. This is very good and relatable literary fiction.

I love this book so hard. Told in alternating chapters from the POV of a mother (told in first person addressing her daughter) and her daughter (in second person — yeah, I know, but it really works here). Beautifully written with so much to say about class and belonging and choice and living hard in the US. One caveat: the first chapter is a bit confusing and not sympathetic to the characters. Stick through the next couple chapters and become emmersed.

I was stuck between 3 and 4 stars with this book. I think my expectations may have been a bit too high. I enjoyed the book, especially because it takes place in Connecticut, where I am from! Elsie was a very interesting character to me, and I enjoyed her POV and sense of humor. I was never bored with this story but I didn't find anything extraordinary about it. I love the idea of it being from both a mother's point of view (when she was 18ish), and time-hopping to her daughter's POV as an 17/18 year old also.

I did not enjoy this book as much as I had anticipated that I would. It is about immigrants from Albania and Lithuania who came to America to work in the brass foundries in Waterbury Connecticut.After the foundries closed many of these people were poverty stricken. The story is about a mother and daughter and is told in two different narratives. I felt the story was fun of the mill at best. I was given this book by the publisher in exchange for a truthful review and for me it was mediocre at best.

“I swear to Allah, you are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.”

Waterbury, Connecticut is the place to go for immigrants, the Brass Manufacturing Capital of the World; that’s true, anyway, until the plant closes. Elsie Kuzavinas waits tables at a Greek restaurant while her mother slaves over the assembly line at the Peter Paul Almond Joy Mounds factory nearby.

Elsie tells us that “My mother had warned me when I took the job to watch out for the Albanians that worked at the Ross, because she heard they treated their women like sacks and that their tempers ran hotter than the deep fryers in the kitchen.” Nevertheless, she falls for the line cook, Bashkim hard and fast. When he offers to take her home one night and then deliberately points his Pontiac Fiero the wrong way, she falls silently complicit, because even if he turns out to be a serial killer, she would be “happier to have died Bashkim’s victim than his nothing-at-all.” Elsie knows that Bashkim had left a wife behind, but they don’t talk about it.

That’s just one of Bashkim’s rules. Nobody is allowed to talk about Bashkim’s wife.

In fact, Bashkim is a humdinger, and seeing Elsie’s slow transition from battered mistress to—not a crusader by any means, but a woman that has a bottom line involving basic safety and minimal security—is bound to make readers sit up straight and pay attention. And when an apologetic relative tells a bruised Elsie that Bashkim didn’t mean to hurt her, I want to cheer when Elsie says, “Of course he did. That’s what fists do.”

Elsie’s story is told alternately with that of the daughter she begets with Bashkim. Lulu is her mother’s daughter, a reckless girl who’s got little to lose. Their stories are presented in a bold, original second person narrative that is unforgettable.

By now I am supposed to have told you that I read this book free thanks to Net Galley and Random House in exchange for this honest review. But when a debut like this one comes along, the superlatives come first, the disclaimers second. Aliu has positioned herself on the literary map, and I dare anyone to try to knock her aside.

Lulu didn’t get the college scholarship she had worked toward; all her hopes and dreams were riding on it. She needs more than an education, she needs to get out of the house. In desperation, Lulu sets out to meet her daddy, convinced that if he can actually see her, he will make everything right for her. Ahmet, a fickle, sweet boy that adores her, agrees to drive her to Texas. Lulu’s journeys, both outward and inward, kept me from thumbing off my reader when midnight came. The inward journey joining Lulu and Elsie is hypnotic.

This story is available to the public January 23, 2018. It’s badass working class fiction. Every feminist, every mother, every daughter, and everyone that loves excellent fiction should get a copy of this book and read it.

Because for all of us, it is better to be Aliu’s readers than her nothing-at-all.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34837009-brass" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Brass" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1491880639m/34837009.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34837009-brass">Brass</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7016785.Xhenet_Aliu">Xhenet Aliu</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2204270043">4 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
I enjoyed this story of Elsie and Luljeta, a mother and daughter from Waterbury, Connecticut. Their story is told in alternating chapters, Elsie’s being when she was 17 and working in a diner where she falls in love with her coworker, an Albanian immigrant named Bakshim, and ends up pregnant. Luljeta’s story takes place when she is 17 yrs old and applying to college, and she wants to find out about her father, who we find out, had a wife in Albania at the time her mother got pregnant with her, and she has never met him.<br /><br />This was a well written debut novel. <br />Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the advanced copy!
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/12851291-karen">View all my reviews</a>

Teenagers may be the most infuriating people on the planet. Even while they’re confused, hormonal, inexperienced, and terrified, they’re always more than ready to charge ahead into bad decisions. When I was a teenager, I muddled along as best I could but still made a lot of mistakes. Now that I’m older, even though I am not a parent, I want to shout at them when they’re about to do something irreparable. This was certainly true as I read Xhenet Aliu’s Brass. This novel follows a mother and a daughter in two different time periods, so we see them both as teenagers at critical times in their lives. I felt a kind of reluctant hope as I read their stories because I very much wanted them to break out of their family’s poverty and escape the traps an existence with nothing to do but have sex, drink, and work their lives away.

The heyday of Waterbury, Connecticut as a brass manufacturing center is long over. Most adults work at whatever low-paying gigs they can. The teenagers work in restaurants for a bit of extra cash. Money is tight. Education is mostly out of reach. And yet, both Elsie and her daughter, Luljeta, hope to someday have a better life. Unfortunately, that hope is derailed by one man: Albanian immigrant Bashkim. Bashkim works as a cook at the Betsy Ross Diner where Elsie works. He is caught by her beauty (he says, Bashkim is a bit of a cipher) and suddenly declares that he is her boyfriend. He tells Elsie that he will someday be rich, when his investments pay off. He also tells her that he is married to a woman back in Albania, so they can’t get married themselves. Still, Elsie sleeps with Bashkim and gets pregnant.

Almost twenty years later, Elsie’s daughter Luljeta, is a quietly angry girl who resents that her mother has never told her about her father. All she knows is that he disappeared before she was born. Luljeta knows that she’s half Albanian, but has been kept away from the other Albanians in Waterbury by her mother. Her ignorance about her heritage infuriates her and so, when she manages to make an Albanian friend, she uses it as an opportunity to learn more about Bashkim.

In Elsie’s half of the story, we learn how her first love slowly went awry as it crashed headlong into the responsibilities of being a teenage parent, living in a depressed town, and fighting with a man (boy) who is already married and incapable of letting go of his first wife. In Luljeta’s half, we see a teenager who wants to break free of her mother’s poorly thought out protections and the lack of opportunities in Waterbury. While Elsie seems already doomed, I still held out hope for Luljeta.

The ending of Brass will be difficult for some readers because it is more ambiguous than they might like. That’s all I’ll say for fear of ruining the story. I can say that, in the end, Brass became a story about compromise and adaptation. Being an adult, at least for these characters meant facing hard realities and deciding whether or not to keep fighting for a different kind of future for oneself…or to compromise and find some acceptable level of happiness with one’s circumstances.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. It will be released 23 January 2018.

The chapters alternate between Elsie when she was younger, and her daughter, Luljeta, when she's almost the same age. I really enjoyed the writing. The author has the ability to transform a mundane sentence into something mesmerizing. Sadly, at a little over halfway, the lack of anything really happening made me bored and the ending didn't make up for that fact. What a disappointing ending.

Brass
Brass relates to Waterbury, CT, the brass mill town, that has seen it’s heyday in the past. Now it is a poor blue collar city, where immigrants are trying to chase the American Dream. I was drawn to this book, because I am an immigrant myself and also because I lived nearly 30 years in Connecticut, barely 20 minutes away from Waterbury and was well aware of the current plight of the city. This book is about a mother, Elsie, granddaughter of Lithuanian immigrants and her daughter Lulu, a child conceived by Bashkim, a married Albanian immigrant. Elsie’s story is told in first person, Lulu’s is in second person. I found the second person narrative strange. Elsie ‘s story starts with her relationship with Bashkim, getting pregnant and ends with her daughter’s Lulu’s birth. Lulu’s story starts 18 years later, when she is a senior in high school, getting ready for college. Her story is her curiosity about her father she never knew and his other family.
So many reviewers commented on the book being well written, for me the endless run on sentences were rambling and not easy to read and follow. Some sentences took a whole long paragraph.
I did very much enjoy the humor in the writing and the very realistic
interactions between multiple family members and generations.
Overall it was definitely a page turner, about 3.5 stars.
Thanks NetGalley, Random House publishing and the author Xhenet Aliu for the advanced copy.

The brass mills in Waterbury, Connecticut have closed. Factories have been abandoned. In 1996, Elsie Kuzavinas is nineteen years old. She is a waitress at the Betsy Ross Diner. She wants to leave this depressed town once she graduates from high school and can buy a car. Elsie depends upon her mother Mamie, an assembly line worker, for transportation. Sometimes Mamie forgets to pick Elsie up from work. Enter Bashkim, an Albanian line cook at the diner. Bashkim frequently drives Elsie home. She enters a relationship with him despite knowing that he has a wife back home in Albania. He assures her that his wife, Agnes has refused to emigrate.

Elsie has hopes and dreams. She wants to flee from this one horse town. An unexpected pregnancy
quashes her ambitions. Boyfriend Bashkim was born in an Albanian labor camp for enemies of the state because his father did not report ownership of his cows to the government. Like many Albanians, Bashkim came to Waterbury under the false impression that there was work in brass foundries. The streets were not lined with gold! Should Elsie and Bashkim bring a child into the world? How can a child be fed and clothed?

Luljeta is now seventeen years old. She has been raised by single parent, Elsie. Lulu is determined to attend college in New York City. After a childhood on public assistance and seemingly never fitting in, she hopes to find her inner strength. A college rejection letter is more than she can handle. She feels emptiness, sorrow and rage. What's up with mother Elsie's behavior, still smothering Lulu and watching over her?

"Brass" by Xhenet Aliu explores the relationship between Elsie and Luljeta using alternating narratives. Reconciling her past will help Lulu embrace her future. Who was her father? What happened to him? How will the quest for this knowledge affect the mother-daughter bond?

Thank you Random House Publishing Group-Random House and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "Brass".

The wave of blue collar fiction continues with this impassioned debut that is all about poverty and the limited choices on offer, especially to women. It’s written with notable intensity from two perspectives, mother and daughter, and though the ending is more of an implosion than a conclusion, what’s impressive here is the texture and commitment. A strong start.

There are many things to like about this novel: the blue collar setting, the multicultural characters, the wry humor. When the narrator switched to second person, it took me awhile to figure out who the new teenager narrator was in the novel. I don't think second person worked well either. The narration didn't flow as seamlessly forcing the "you" throughout her sections. Though, the strongest chapter in the novel was Chapter 14, a second person chapter. I wish the author allowed that raw honesty to surface throughout the novel because damn it, everyone in that novel had a difficult life, yet, as a reader, I felt removed from the chaos and frustration.

It's hard to believe that Brass is a debut novel for Xhenet Aliu. It's a powerful story, and so well written. The story is told in two timelines from the alternating points of view of mother Ellie and daughter Luljeta. Ellie's part of the story takes place when she is in her late teens, meets Luljeta's father, and gets pregnant. Luljeta's story takes place 17 years later, as she is finishing high school and trying to figure out who she is and what to do next. They live in a small town, with little wealth, and with waves of Albanian immigrants. Luljeta's father is Albanian, and long gone by the time her part of the story takes place. Ellie's story focuses on what happened with Luljeta's father, while Luljeta's story focuses on trying to figure out her background and what happened to her father. The two timelines come together brilliantly and with heartbreak at the end. These characters are both tough, whip smart and deeply conflicted. Their love runs deep, but their relationship is fraught. Aliu's writing is unsentimental, but potent. I felt fully emotionally engaged with these characters. Highly recommend to anyone who likes strong writing and interesting characters. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

This is a fantastic debut novel, captivating and well written, about mothers and daughters, broken by the abandonment of fathers , a husband , a lover, about secrets kept and seeking identity. There are other layers of the story - the search of an immigrant for a escape from communism to a better life, the struggle of women who are single parents and the things that life deals that get in the way.

There are two alternating narratives. Elsie, an eighteen year old girl in a dead end job at a diner in Waterbury, Connecticut, hoping to just get out of this place until she meets Bashkim , an immigrant from Albania, and everything changes. The second narrative brings the story into the future and is that of her 17 year old daughter Luljeta. The author has chosen an interesting way to tell Luljeta's part of the story by telling it in the second person , speaking about herself as some one other than herself. At first I thought that maybe it might drive me crazy, but on the contrary , it worked . It worked so well reflecting in an intimate almost self analytical way about her relationship with her mother, her plans for the future and her identity as she wonders who her father is and where he might be.

There is sadness amidst the dysfunction in these relationships but hopefulness in possibilities of forgiveness. I can't say that I loved all of these characters all of the time; they each have their flaws. I can say that I was drawn into their lives , cared about the outcome and rooted for them every step of the way.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Random House through NetGalley.