A Scatter of Light

**A companion novel to the bestselling and NBA-longlisted Last Night at the Telegraph Club, set in Marin County in 2013, during the summer the Supreme Court overturned California''s law forbidding gay marriage./b>Aria Tang West had plans for her summer after high school and before MIT. Then an ill-advised party hookup with a forgettable boy ends with nonconsensual topless pictures on Tumblr, and Aria quickly finds her invitation to Cape Cod retracted and her flight to Marin County to stay with grandmother booked. But the summer of 2013 in the Bay is a momentous one--for Aria, for the working-class queer community she finds herself in, and for her artist grandmother. It''s the kind of summer that changes a life''s trajectory forever.;Set against the backdrop of the first of the major Supreme Court decisions that brought marriage equality to the United States, Aria''s coming-of-age story is deftly entwined with a poignant note of closure for Lily and Kath from Last Night at the Telegraph Club.

Autorentext

Malinda Lo

Klappentext

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this “raw and bittersweet” (Publishers Weekly) queer coming-of-age companion novel to Last Night at the Telegraph Club, a high school senior gets shipped off to grandma for a party gone wrong, but what should have been a forgettable summer becomes anything but.

“Full of yearning, ponderances about art, and what it means to be an artist.”—NPR

“Queer in the best of ways—messy, raw, heartbreaking, freeing, and imperfect.”—Autostraddle
**
Aria Tang West was looking forward to a summer on Martha’s Vineyard with her best friends—one last round of sand and sun before college. But after a graduation party goes wrong, Aria’s parents exile her to California to stay with her grandmother, artist Joan West. Aria expects boredom, but what she finds is Steph Nichols, her grandmother’s gardener. Soon, Aria is second-guessing who she is and what she wants to be, and a summer that once seemed lost becomes unforgettable—for Aria, her family, and the working-class queer community Steph introduces her to. It’s the kind of summer that changes a life forever.

And decades after the end of Last Night at the Telegraph Club, this companion novel also offers a glimpse into Lily and Kath’s lives since 1955.

Zusammenfassung
“Full of yearning, ponderances about art and what it means to be an artist, and self-revelation, A Scatter of Light has a simmering intensity that makes it hard to put down."—NPR *

An Instant New York Times Bestseller

Last Night at the Telegraph Club* author Malinda Lo returns to the Bay Area with another masterful queer coming-of-age story, this time set against the backdrop of the first major Supreme Court decisions legalizing gay marriage. 

Aria Tang West was looking forward to a summer on Martha’s Vineyard with her best friends—one last round of sand and sun before college. But after a graduation party goes wrong, Aria’s parents exile her to California to stay with her grandmother, artist Joan West. Aria expects boredom, but what she finds is Steph Nichols, her grandmother’s gardener. Soon, Aria is second-guessing who she is and what she wants to be, and a summer that once seemed lost becomes unforgettable—for Aria, her family, and the working-class queer community Steph introduces her to. It’s the kind of summer that changes a life forever.

And almost sixty years after the end of Last Night at the Telegraph Club, A Scatter of Light also offers a glimpse into Lily and Kath’s lives since 1955.

Leseprobe
My grandmother was gone by the time I came downstairs on Friday morning. Analemma was sprawled on the rug in front of the cold woodstove in the living room, and her tail thumped against the floor as I bent down to pet her. In the kitchen, Grandma had left a check for Steph on the table, weighted down with the saltshaker.
I poured myself coffee, made toast, and took it all out to the deck, where I sat in the morning sunlight and gazed at the hills. It was going to be a hot day; I could feel the promise of it in the way the sun sank into my hair. In the distance, I heard the gate opening and closing. That metal latch dropping into place.
I couldn’t see Steph from here, but there was something delicious about knowing that she was coming up the hill, and if I went around the house to look for her, I could see her. From my vantage point, it seemed as if I was alone, but I wasn’t. Steph was close enough that if I called her name, she would probably hear me.
I sat on the deck for a while, listening. The gardening tools were kept in a shed just below the studio, and I heard the bolt on the shed door thrown open, and then the low creak of the hinges. I heard the clanging of tools against each other, and the rumble of the wheelbarrow as it was pushed out into the yard. Thump, thump, clang. The door creaking again, closing. Footsteps and the wheelbarrow, trundling away.
Another few minutes passed, and then I went back into the kitchen. My grandmother always had a pitcher of iced tea in the fridge, and there was a bowl of lemons on the counter. It was getting hot already, and Steph would probably be thirsty. I took out the lemon squeezer and some glasses and set them on the counter along with the iced tea, long spoons, and a tray of ice from the freezer. I didn’t let myself think about what I was doing; I just did it.
Analemma ran ahead of me out the front door, and I followed more slowly with the two glasses of iced tea. The hill that the cottage was built into was terraced, and the brick path wound back and forth down the hill like a Z. I heard Steph greeting Ana before I saw her, and when I rounded the bend and Steph came into view, she looked exactly as I expected—baseball cap, shorts, sleeveless tee—but it still startled me: my imagination made real.
She looked up as she rubbed Analemma’s back and smiled. “Hey.”
“I thought you might want some iced tea,” I said, and offered her a glass.
She was wearing work gloves, and she took one off to accept it. Our fingertips brushed together. “Thanks.” She took a sip and then set the glass down on the stone bench nearby.
“My grandmother gave me this to give to you, too.” I took the check out of my pocket and held it out to her.
“Great.” She took it without touching me, and I was a little disappointed.
“She also asked me to invite you over for lunch sometime.”
“That’s nice of her,” Steph said as she folded the check and put it in her pocket.
“She said any day would do, as long as it was after noon.”
“I’ll check my schedule at work and get back to her. Is she out? Her car’s gone.”
“Yeah, she went to Berkeley.”
Steph went to sit on the bench, taking another drink of her iced tea, and gestured for me to join her. “Did you have a good time last Saturday?” she asked. Analemma nosed around the flower bed where she had been weeding.
I sat down beside her. “Yeah, I had a great time. Thanks for inviting me.”
“Anytime.” She glanced sideways at me, a mischievous expression on her face, and asked, “Did Mel try to make a move on you after we left?”
“That’s private,” I said with hint of a grin.
“She did, didn’t she?” Steph seemed to think this was hilarious. “I hope she didn’t make you uncomfortable.”
“Oh, no. Mel is great.”
“Good.” Steph drank more of the iced tea; it was almost gone already. “You doing anything this weekend?”
“No. I’m h…