[QCrit]: HOME & EVERYWHERE ELSE, UPMARKET FICTION, 79K, 2ND ATTEMPT

Thank you for the feedback on my recent 1st attempt - it was really useful and gave me a lot to think about.

Have tried to include more action/plot rather than foundational information but it's starting to feel too long. And based on feedback on the first 300 (which I haven't changed so haven't posted again), I changed the genre from literary to upmarket.

Thanks again to those who commented on my previous attempt and thanks in advance to anybody who has the time/patience to take a look this time!

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Dear AGENT,

I hope this note finds you well.

Mina Nikolić never meant to stay in Europe. She intended to spend a summer backpacking before starting grad school, but after first extending her trip, then deferring for a semester, Mina just … no-showed. Now, after six years working in hostels and drifting in and out of her aunt's small Belgrade apartment, Mina – a second-generation Serbian-American, planetary geosciences major, and former gifted child who has thus far failed to live up to expectations – finds herself face-to-face with an immigration officer asking to see a visa she doesn’t have. In short order, she’s on a flight home to face the life she deserted.

But in Tucson, everybody has moved on: her sister has had a baby, her mother has become obsessed with cooking food from her Serbian homeland, her father’s hoarding has turned her parents’ home into a tragicomedy, and her peers are all settled with partners, jobs, and homes … everything Mina doesn’t have.

When Mina runs into her former professor, renowned astronaut Irena Jackson, Mina believes this is the opportunity she has been looking for to get back on the trajectory she assumed was her destiny, given the expectations everybody had of Mina when she was growing up. Most importantly to Mina, she feels certain a connection with Irena Jackson will prove that Mina is special after all. It doesn’t go to plan, and Mina systematically fractures all of her closest relationships and starts applying to jobs outside of Arizona, desperate to get away.

Against the desert backdrop of a hometown she both deeply loves and feels contempt for, Mina must reckon with the things that caused her to flee Tucson and decide if she will again leave and forge a path away from her loved ones, or if she’s ready this time to stay and learn what it means to belong, to a place and to a family.

HOME & EVERYWHERE ELSE is a coming-of-age story, centered on a voice from the Yugoslav diaspora, grappling with the weight of expectations both external and self-imposed. It features an adrift protagonist reminiscent of WRITERS & LOVERS who must absorb her life shocks and find a new path, with the wry humor and overly-entangled multicultural family dynamics of GRETA & VALDIN.

[BIO]

HOME & EVERYWHERE ELSE is an upmarket contemporary novel complete at 79,000 words. Given [PERSONALIZATION], I thought you would be a great fit.

The first TK are attached. Thank you for your time and consideration.