A sharp, unflinching novel about the double-edged desire to have children and to be free of the past, for readers of THE SCHOOL FOR BAD MOTHERS by Jessamine Chan and NURSERY by Szilvia Molnar

Life is quiet in Building 41-41, a small residential complex off Sunnyside Boulevard in Queens. The superintendent, Joseph Hampton, and his awkward son Jamie, work tirelessly to keep the premises spotless and the tenants happy. Jamie, an unusual young man with countless cleaning rituals and a penchant for snooping, harbors a secret desire to have a child with his equally peculiar girlfriend Lizzie. But nobody pays him much attention as long as the trash is cleared and the elevator buttons gleam. The Hamptons have run the building for thirty-five years, who cares if their son is a little strange?

But one day, Jamie disappears, and suddenly it’s everybody’s business. From the subway clerk who hates him, to the retired ballerina who saw him doing something quite bizarre, to his controlling mother Linda – they all hold their breath and wait for news. While the tenants start unearthing secrets about Jaime’s life for the police investigators, Lizzie sets out to find him.

The search for Jamie leads to Karen, a new mother struggling to win her husband’s trust and support when strange disturbances shake their life in Building 41-41. A tragic misunderstanding pits Karen and Jaime against each other in a cold, paranoid struggle, with Lizzie caught dangerously in the middle. Before the dust settles, Karen and Jamie must reckon with their obsessive tendencies: hers as a newfangled mother, and his, cultivated over a lifetime.

Written with radical empathy, THE WONDERFUL MONTH OF MAY delivers a shady view of Sunnyside, and what happens behind its closed doors.