Mice 1961

Stacey Levine

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Mice 1961 won the 2025 American Book Award and was named one of the Washington Post's "50 Notable Works of Fiction" in 2024. A novel set in the Cold War era about two orphaned half-sisters, a boarder, and the neighbors who surround them, a stylized and startling depiction of lives lived at a high pitch of emotion in the shadow of global catastrophe. Stacey Levine's Mice 1961 recounts a pivotal day in the fraught relationship of two orphaned sisters through the eyes of their obsessively observant housekeeper, Girtle. Will Jody be able to cope if her younger sibling Mice, subject to constant harassment in their community for her unusual appearance and habits, leaves home? How will their all-watching companion convey her fierce attachment to them both? As a Greek chorus of local characters cavort and joke their way through a neighborhood party, the sisters and their ardent admirer cross paths with an unsettling stranger, leading to momentous changes for all. Set in southern Florida at the height of cold-war hysteria, Mice 1961 is a powerful meditation on belonging, conformity and otherness.