How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?
A Novel
Anna Montague
256 Pages
On-Sale Date: 22/10/2024
ISBN: 9780063353640
Trim Size: 6.350in x 9.350in x 1.000in
A funny and moving novel about love, loss, and new beginnings found on an unlikely road trip
Most days, Magda is fine. She has her routines. She has her anxious therapy patients, who depend on her to cure their bad habits. She has her longtime colleagues, whose playful bickering she mediates. She’s mourning the recent loss of her best friend, Sara, but has brokered a tentative truce with Sara’s prickly widower as she helps him sort through the last of Sara’s possessions. She’s fine.
But in going through Sara’s old journal, Magda discovers her friend’s last directive: plans for a road trip they would take together in celebration of Magda’s upcoming seventieth birthday. So, with Sara’s urn in tow, Magda decides to hit the road, crossing the country and encountering a cast of memorable characters—including her sister, from whom she’s been keeping secrets. Along the way she stumbles upon a jazz funeral in New Orleans and a hilarious women’s retreat meant to “unleash one’s divine feminine energy” in Texas, and meets a woman who challenges her conceptions of herself—and the hidden truths about her friendship with Sara.
As the trip shakes up her careful routines, Magda finally faces longings she locked away years ago and confronts questions about her sexuality and identity she thought she had long put to rest. And as she soon learns, it’s never too late to start your next journey.
“At once tender and hilarious, How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? is a beautifully written and moving novel of loss and new beginnings.” — Jonas Jonasson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
“A road trip novel with a tremendous amount of heart – I ached along with the characters, rooted for them, wished them all the best. Truly a novel that asks you to consider the winding, secret path to love that sits lodged in every person’s breast. Anna Montague has written something bright and lovely here, a novel that is above all quietly beautiful.” — Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth and Mostly Dead Things
“I love therapy and books about therapists, so this warm and witty debut novel won me completely. I loved Magda Eklund’s journey of grief and wonderment.” — Amanda Eyre Ward, New York Times bestselling author of The Jetsetters and Lovers and Liars
“My God, where has Magda Eklund been all my life? In this assured, hilarious, and surprisingly tender debut, Anna Montague shows how the unexpected journeys we go on to find ourselves can happen at any age. It’s an exploration of identity and queerness, family and grief, all packed into one rollicking road trip. Populated by a cast of wholly unforgettable characters, How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? is the best kind of novel—one that leaves you loving the people around you a little bit more, and craving your next adventure.” — Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding
“Delightful. . . . This earnest road novel has plenty of appeal.” — Publishers Weekly
