A Stranger Comes to Town
Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
4.00
· 1 ratings · 208 pages · Published: 28 Oct 2025
After being found on a sidewalk, knocked down by a bicycle on Columbus Avenue one block from New York’s Central Park, Joe Marzino remembers nothing, not even his own name. He awakens into the world with only the clothes on his back, a throbbing pain in his left ankle, and more questions than answers.
Joe’s search to discover his true identity exposes how even the most ordinary aspects of our lives are often extraordinarily felt. A Stranger Comes to Town is a masterful novel of self-discovery, revealing the multitude of histories and lives we each inhabit, as well as the many ways we seek to reinvent ourselves and reshape our pasts.
A Stranger Comes to Town is crafted with immense imagination and a skillfulness that reaffirms Lynne Sharon Schwartz, celebrated author of thirty books including novels, short fiction, poetry, criticism, and works of translation, as one of the most assured writers of our time.
Past Praise for Lynne Sharon Schwartz
“This excellent writer has the gift of making even the slightest of domestic situations feel richly alive to the pleasures we allow and the punishments we inflict on ourselves and one another.”
—Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments: A Memoir
“Lynne Sharon Schwartz is a dazzling writer.”
—Hilma Wolitzer, author of Today, a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket
"Schwartz is an elegant writer with a nimble intellect..."
—The Seattle Times
"Lynne Sharon Schwartz reaches into her heart, examines its intricacies, tinkers with little broken bits, and shows us what she's learned — daring us to try this risky procedure at home."
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“[Schwartz’s] insights are at once sympathetic and drenched with irony.”
—The New York Times
“…an American literary treasure.”
—Publishers Weekly
"[R]eading Schwartz is like a pleasurable visit with a thoughtful and articulate friend."
—Kirkus
There's an incredible intimacy to Schwartz's prose, that precious feeling of connectedness you experience only with the very closest of friends.
—Booklist