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Porcupines

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.


Los Angeles, 2001. Sonia is raising her daughter, Mila, alone in the sunny but somnolent suburbs of LA. Her days are a blur of not-quite-illegal business activities, avoiding other moms, and baking birthday cakes laced with rum: minor mistakes that nevertheless remind her she doesn’t belong.
Mila, meanwhile, is juggling violin and swimming lessons and navigating the treacherous social politics of school – all the while trying to get her mother to share something, anything, about her past.

But there are just too many things that Mila doesn’t know:

  • She doesn’t know that her mother grew up in Soviet Hungary (where getting your hands on a banana was one of the greatest thrills in life)
  • She doesn’t know that her mother has a sister called Rina (whom she hasn’t spoken to in 10 years)
  • The only thing she does know about her father is that he was a ‘good time’ (according to her mother)
  • Crucially, she doesn’t know that there is a very good reason why her mother dodges everyone, from traffic cops to vice principals.

So, Mila concocts a scheme to get her mother, and the man Mila is kind of sure must be her father to reconnect. It involves corralling Sonia into chaperoning an orchestra of ten-year-olds (most of whom seem to be called Megan) on a road trip from LA to San Francisco, and it may just cause their carefully constructed lives to implode.

Moving between Budapest before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Washington, DC in the tense years of the Cold War and the bright sunshine of early 2000s Los Angeles, Porcupines is an irresistible novel about mothers and daughters, belonging and reinvention, the things we carry with us, and those we tell ourselves we’ve left behind.
‘A dazzling mother-daughter story’ Jenny Jackson, author of Pineapple Street

'Funny, acerbic, and wonderfully playful: a novel to sink into' NAOMI WOOD, author of Mrs. Hemingway

'Destined to become an instant classic. Richly drawn characters in an immigrant journey as old as America herself' ADRIANA TRIGIANI, author of The View From Lake Como

© Fran Fabriczki 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Critics Review

Destined to become an instant classic. Richly drawn characters in an immigrant journey as old as America herself
Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The View From Lake Como
Funny, acerbic, and wonderfully playful, Porcupines is a brilliant, cross-generational portrait of an immigrant family constantly assailed by whether they are American enough, Hungarian enough or Jewish enough. It's completely delicious: a novel to sink into
Naomi Wood, author of Mrs. Hemingway
Porcupines manages the rarest of things: depicting beautifully complex characters, while simultaneously providing a deeply comforting world. The best debut I’ve read this year
Grace Murray, author of Blank Canvas
Perfect for Elif Batuman fans, this is a wonderfully warm, witty read about mothers and daughters, sisters and lovers, migration and belonging, and what it truly means to feel at home. I loved it
Julianne Pachico, author of The Jungle House
An acutely and deftly told story of family … Wise, emotive and funny, Fran Fabriczki is a beautiful writer who writes sisterhood and motherhood so well I felt like could reach out and touch her characters
Ore Agbaje-Williams, author of The Three of Us
A haunting, funny and compulsively readable novel about the intricacies of family, loss and trust
Chloe Caldwell, author of Women
If Gilmore Girls had sharper edges and came with a Los Angeles sunburn, you’d have this riveting novel, a love letter to kids who are done keeping their parents’ secrets
Courtney Maum, author of I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You
A dazzling mother-daughter story, Porcupines shows us the softness that lies beneath the spikes
Jenny Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Pineapple Street
A really accomplished debut. Sharp and funny as hell
Chris Power, author of A Lonely Man
Sonia and her daughter Mila are wonderfully funny, unpredictable forces in this sharp, witty take on the American dream and the persistence of Old Europe
Andrew Cowan, author of PIg
Author Fran Fabriczki
Narrator Stephanie Nemeth-Parker
Duration 8 hours and 20 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781405985307
Format Audiobook
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Genre Family life fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Displacement, exile, migration
Availability AU, GB, IE

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