Chosen Family: A Novel

An exuberant and irreverently funny novel about one gorgeously messy friendship-feud-unrequited-love-affair set in Sydney across eighteen years.

Nell Argall and Eve Bowman are both brilliant, odd, and friendless. When they meet on the brutal battlefield that is their posh all girls’ high school during their first year there, both their lives are changed forever. From school, to university, to careers, Nell and Eve’s relationship is a life raft that is also a poison apple that is also a Medusan stare, frozen in time.

When the passion, guilt, shame, and joy that perpetually twists and turns between them finally implodes, Nell abruptly walks away, leaving Eve alone at the helm of the gloriously unorthodox family they’ve built with their seven-year-old daughter, Lake. Eve finds herself left wondering: Can the wounds of adolescent betrayal ever really heal? Can we ever really understand what’s going on in someone else’s head? And what’s love got to do, got to do with it?

Written with Gray’s characteristic big-heartedness and dark wit, Chosen Family is a queer modern classic that reminds us again and again that sometimes the most fulfilling and life-saving relationships are the ones that are the hardest to define.

"Funny, contemporary and attuned to the subtle negotiations that shape friendships and first loves." —Sydney Morning Herald

"Funny, profound, and deeply true, Chosen Family is a tender story about love, identity, family, and whether it is possible to combine the three into something entirely new. I turned the pages so fast, it felt like reading a mystery, except the only mystery is the spectacular complexity of the human heart. Wow, what a novel." —Holly Brickley, author of Deep Cuts

“With great wit, candor, and empathy, Madeleine Gray’s Chosen Family tells a story of queer community, one where the lines between friendship and love blur, where characters try to forge new paths, sometimes stumbling gloriously along the way. Smart, moving, and funny, Chosen Family is an ode to those who reject convention in hopes of something brighter, truer, and more alive.” —Thomas Grattan, author of In Tongues

“I laughed, I cried, I fell in love with Chosen Family. Beautiful, devastating, hilarious and full of life.” —Jessica Stanley, author of Consider Yourself Kissed

“A passionate ode to friendship that is sharp and hilarious funny, brave and utopian, sexy but not too serious about it. Most of all it felt deeply real and true.” —Niamh Campbell, author of This Happy

“Whatever it is, Gray has it!” —Nigella Lawson