Martha Cooley, bestselling author of The Archivist, returns with a long-anticipated novel that ranges over the puzzles of family, the marvels of scent, and the release of constricted love.
Years after the end of her marriage and the death of her mysterious father, Camilla Archerís tightly reined existence is upended by her dreams.A man more real than her waking life begins appearing to her, a theatrical figure in a mask and tuxedo, offering up unexpected visions and reinventions of key moments in her past.
In her waking life, Camilla, a New Yorker, runs a successful business selling theater memorabilia.Her knowledge of theater gives her a clue: this vexing nocturnal figure is connected to a legendary Russian director killed during Stalinís purges.The masked man was the directorís double, in fact--and now heís the sly impresario of Camillaís dreams.
So begins Camillaís piecing-together of the puzzle of her past, along with that of her father, a perfumist, and Eve, the recently deceased cousin with whom Camilla grew up.Traveling in memory and dream back to Moscow and Paris between the wars, Camilla has the chance to unknot her life--if sheís willing to ask why a double has infiltrated her dreams, and what he wants her to discover.

"Cooley (The Archivist) delivers a craftily plotted, multilayered Manhattan adventure involving the incongruous intersection between an American perfumer and the Russian theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold. In 1999, middle-aged Camilla Archer co-owns, with her ex-husband, a West Village theater accoutrements store and nurtures Danny, the 25-year-old daughter of Camilla's recently deceased cousin, Eve. Danny's true father is unknown, and she besieges Camilla — who has her own issues with her deceased perfumer father, Jordan — with inconvenient questions. Backstory: Camilla's mother died while giving birth, and the infant Camilla was brought to New York to live with Eve's parents. Eventually, Eve fell in love with her uncle Jordan, to devastating results. Meanwhile, a witty interloper narrator, who calls himself Meyerhold's doppelgnger, recounts the strange, brief encounter between Jordan and the Russian director Meyerhold in the 1920s. This narrator is a kind of dream-meister, who urged Meyerhold on a course of denial with his Soviet interrogators, to no avail, and stages Camilla's dreams about her father, whom she hasn't truly let go. Cooley demonstrates a solid grasp of the making of a perfume industry 'nose,' as well as the hip insouciance of the longtime Manhattanite. The narrative is set up as layers of theatrical contrivance, and the Meyerhold slant lends a compelling artifice to this quirky production. Agent, Deborah Schneider. (May)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

- The Archivist, Martha Cooley's first novel, was a national bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book.- With the assurance, complexity, and depth of a work by Bulgakov, DeLillo, or Poe, Martha Cooley's extraordinary second novel is further evidence that she is one of the most gifted writers at work today.

Martha Cooley lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teachesat Bennington Collegeís MFA program in creative writing. THIRTY-THREE SWOONS is her second novel.