Description

This is a celebration of family – of shifting allegiances, riotous laughter, complicated love.

Meet four sisters – Cassandra, Fay, Lela, and Suzette – and their sprawling circle of daughters
and sons, parents and cousins, friends and lovers. Here are strong women and enigmatic men whose quirks are written in their children’s faces, whose siblings are always getting their shared stories wrong, whose needs weigh heavily: money, status, a lover, a child – or simply company.

Journeying from a glittering soiree to a haunted porch, Company is a multigenerational, joyfully honest expression of belonging – and of how far we sometimes land from home.

Publisher Review

‘A deftly woven tapestry that scrupulously depicts familial ties and estrangement, richly told with a nuance that allows each character dignity and grace’ – New York Times

‘Company introduces an unforgettable cast of characters who remind us that family can be both wound and salve. Sanders offers sharp and original insight into the intimate politics of race and class and the impossible rules we’ve inherited to navigate them. This is a brilliant and immaculate debut’ – Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections

‘Company is a story collection that eats like a novel. Each story feels like a completely different vision of the same majestically sprawling family, as these neurotic high achievers struggle to balance the duties of kinship, social appearances, and honesty to their true selves. Reading Shannon Sanders makes me want to visit home’ – Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens

‘If love is a many-splendored thing, family love is a little more complex. The extended clan Shannon Sanders conjures in Company is fully alive-and very funny!-recognizable but wholly new, and to read their stories is to get the gift you don’t always get from your own family: the feeling of being seen’ – Will Allison, author of Long Drive Home

‘Assured and incisive, this collection hums with the dark comedy of striving and speaks the inconvenient necessity of affiliation as it unravels the complications of belonging. This clear-eyed debut brims human’ – Tracy O’Neill, author of The Quotients