Stay True

At once a coming-of-age memoir, a devastating elegy for a departed friend, and a mixtape of all the music and other shards of culture and experience that coalesce into an identity, Stay True is wildly original … A glorious, unforgettable book – Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing
Impossible to put down … profoundly moving … a work of intellect, honesty and love * The Guardian *
A remarkably moving account of male affection and grief * The Observer *
A quiet, occasionally hilarious, ultimately devastating book … the most moving and memorable piece of autobiography I read this year. * The Independent, ‘The Ten Best Books of 2023’ *
An exceptional portrait of male affection and a young life senselessly cut short * The Independent, ‘Best Memoir: 2023’ *
A powerful and beautifully written meditation on guilt, memory and male friendship * The Guardian, ‘Best Books of the Year’ *
Quietly wrenching … This is a memoir that gathers power through accretion — all those moments and gestures that constitute experience, the bits and pieces that coalesce into a life * The New York Times *
A beautiful memoir that goes deep into the heart of friendships * The Financial Times *
A luminous and tender-hearted story… Stay True is a nuanced and beautiful evocation of young adulthood in all its sloppy, exuberant glory * The Wall Street Journal *
[Hsu writes] with devastating emotional precision, questioning the possibility of meaning in tragedy and the value of the stories we tell while attempting to find it … an extraordinary, devotional act of friendship * The Washington Post *
This book is exquisite and excruciating and I will be thinking about it for years and years to come – Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars Room
Remarkable … an evocative coming-of-age story about the formation of identity, friendship, and grief * AnOther Magazine *
This is writing at its best … one of those books that is the sum total of a writer’s life in thinking, craft, and curiosity, made felt at last, so that when the sentences come, they come with a deliberate, patient, and precise force – Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
I was softly heartbroken by Stay True … [A] once-in-a-lifetime book – Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror
Not since Ann Patchett wrote about her friend Lucy Grealy in Truth and Beauty has there been such an achingly tender book about a platonic friendship * Los Angeles Times *
Funny and wise … What a gift it is to remember the people you loved, and who loved you, while you were busy becoming yourself * The Atlantic *
Stay True is about the beautiful, unpredictable alchemy of how friendship—particularly male friendship—forms in the first place * GQ *
A moving portrait of a persona undone by tragedy * Vogue *
This book is going to break your heart. * The Australian *

Hua Hsu is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He teaches at Bard College and is the author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific.

Stay True was named one of the ‘Ten Best Books of 2022’ by The New York Times, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography.

Originally from the Bay Area, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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