Lonely Crowds - by Stephanie Wambugu

About the Book

"Ruth, an only child of recent immigrants to New England, lives in an emotionally cold home and attends the local Catholic girl's school on a scholarship. Maria, a beautiful orphan whose Panamanian mother dies by suicide and is taken care of by an ill, unloving aunt, is one of the only other students attending the school on a scholarship. Ruth is drawn forcefully into Maria's orbit, and they fall into an easy, yet intense, friendship. Her devotion to her charming and bright new friend opens up her previously sheltered world. While Maria, charismatic and aware of her ability to influence others, eases into her full self, embracing her sexuality and her desire to be an artist, Ruth is mostly content to follow her around: to college and then into the early-nineties art world of New York City. Ambition and competition threaten to rupture their friendship, while strong and unspoken forces pull them together over the years"--

Book Synopsis

TIME's 100 Must Read Books of 2025 Vulture's Best Books of 2025 New York Magazine's Best Books of the Year

Luster meets The Idiot in this riveting debut novel about a volatile friendship between two outsiders who escape their bleak childhoods and enter the glamorous early '90s art world in New York City, where only one of them can make it.

Ruth, an only child of recent immigrants to New England, lives in an emotionally cold home and attends the local Catholic girl's school on a scholarship. Maria, a beautiful orphan whose Panamanian mother dies by suicide and is taken care of by an ill, unloving aunt, is one of the only other students attending the school on a scholarship. Ruth is drawn forcefully into Maria's orbit, and they fall into an easy, yet intense, friendship. Her devotion to her charming and bright new friend opens up her previously sheltered world.

While Maria, charismatic and aware of her ability to influence others, eases into her full self, embracing her sexuality and her desire to be an artist, Ruth is mostly content to follow her around: to college and then into the early-nineties art world of New York City. There, ambition and competition threaten to rupture their friendship, while strong and unspoken forces pull them together over the years. Whereas Maria finds early success in New York City as an artist, Ruth stumbles along the fringes of the art world, pulled toward a quieter life of work and marriage. As their lives converge and diverge, they meet in one final and fateful confrontation.

Ruth and Maria's decades-long friendship interrogates the nature of intimacy, desire, class and time. What does it mean to be an artist and to be true to oneself? What does it mean to give up on an obsession? Marking the arrival of a sensational new literary talent, Lonely Crowds challenges us to reckon honestly with our own ambitions and the lives we hope to lead.

Review Quotes

"...A brilliant debut. The novel is incredibly rich in observations on all aspects of life."--Chicago Review of Books

"[An] uncommonly elegant debut novel...Wambugu's prose has a propulsive, almost hypnotic drive, and she knows how to keep it moving, getting through about as much time in one book as [Elena] Ferrante does in three...a thrilling and capacious novel about intimacy and art-making in which the narrator proves to be more compelling than her muse."--The Cut

"A book of obsession and quiet brutality, interrogating what it means to chase goals--artistic success, fulfilling friendships--that may, ultimately, hold no real value."--Los Angeles Review of Books

"Extraordinary...Wambugu writes with an easy wit, her sentences as approachable as her deeply relatable narrator...as Ruth grows up and into an independent perspective whose outlines can finally be distinguished from those of the people she grew up with, it's the specificity of this young woman's mind, the contours with which she draws the characters and environments around her, that make Lonely Crowds exceptional...Wambugu shows that the state of devotion can be more about the giver than the receiver."--The New York Times Book Review

"Robust, meaningful, and poignant without losing its humor, Stephanie Wambugu's standout debut Lonely Crowds narrates a complicated friendship for the ages."--OurCulture Mag

"A nuanced and introspective read that delves into the dynamics of an intense friendship that begins in youth and continues well into adulthood...a friendship that examines desire, class, ambition, and more."--ESSENCE

"A resonant coming-of-age novel about the complicated interplay between friendship and artistic ambition...an understated portrait of an artist learning how to come into her own."--Publishers Weekly

"Masterful, thoughtful...In short, blunt sentences, the book devastatingly portrays the realities of money, race, sexuality, ambition -- along with the gossipy competitiveness of any insular scene -- that both Ruth and Maria confront in New York...one of the most emotionally and intellectually rich debuts I can remember reading in this or any year."--Boston Globe

"Perhaps the most prevailing myth about childhood friends is that they know each other completely and love each other best. Wambugu counters such sentimentalism by revealing the many secrets and misunderstandings at the core of Ruth and Maria's friendship. In their world, a lifelong bond is not a comfort but a liability."--The Atlantic

"The art world is infamously cutthroat--and an endless source of inspiration for novelists. Wambugu's debut fits squarely into this tradition, conjuring New York's art scene in the early 1990s through the intense, competitive, and richly imagined friendship of two ambitious women."--The Millions

"The debut novel from Stephanie Wambugu makes a compelling case that friendship between girls -- that thorny source of envy, love, and obsession -- is an eternal narrative wellspring...This is a propulsive story about what it means to grow up with someone."--Vulture

"Wambugu's deft observations render the pleasures and heartbreaks of romance, family, and lifelong friendship with sharp, often painful clarity."--The Drift

"[A] stunning literary debut novel...author Stephanie Wambugu perfectly captures the intensity between two women as they navigate the tumultuous waves of friendship, sexuality and ambition."--WBUR

"Writing beautifully about ambition, class, art, domesticity, identity, and complacency, Wambugu's prose is as striking as it is sure. A heartbreaking and penetrating coming-of-age debut."--Kirkus Reviews

"Wambugu's mesmerizing debut novel is like a slow-burning fire, drawing readers into its world with quiet intensity...Wambugu's prose is sharp and meticulous, effortlessly capturing the nuances of artistic ambition and the emotional weight of creativity. The novel explores how art both shapes and distorts relationships, asking whether self-expression can ever be truly separate from the people who inspire and enact it. Compelling and evocative, the impact of Lonely Crowds lingers long after the final page is turned."--Booklist

"Lonely Crowds is an extraordinary novel filled with a special kind of wisdom and grace: each page a marvel of precision and intimacy that will pull at every strand of your heart."--Dinaw Menegetsu, author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears and How to Read the Air

"A heartstopping debut. This icy flame of a novel distills what it's like to try to become yourself amidst the ravages of faith."--Namwali Serpell, author of The Old Drift and The Furrows

"Lonely Crowds is an artist's novel of uncommon elegance--a singular portrait of love and guilt and envy, self-discovery and self-deception, struck through with blazing need. Stephanie Wambugu writes with a clerestoried brilliance that throws striking light and strange shadows across her unforgettable narrator Ruth's traversals of youth, schooling, and becoming. A sensation."--Alexandra Tanner, author of Worry

"Stephanie Wambugu has written a coming-of-age friendship novel for the ages. Her prose and vision are sharp and she writes about art and ambition with a rare combination of frankness and grace."--Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends

About the Author

Stephanie Wambugu was born in Mombasa, Kenya in 1998 and grew up in Rhode Island. She lives and works in New York, where she received her MFA from Columbia University. She is an editor of Joyland Magazine. Lonely Crowds is her first novel.