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Wit's End
by Karen Joy Fowler

Wit's End Cover

About This Book

ISBN13: 9780399154751
ISBN10: 0399154752
All Product Details

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

From the author of the runaway bestseller The Jane Austen Book Club comes a sly and clever novel of mystery, intrigue, and virtual reality.

Set in contemporary Santa Cruz, Wit's End opens as Rima Lanisell arrives at her godmother’s old Victorian mansion, weary from her recent losses — an inventive if at times irritating father, a beloved brother. (Indeed, Rima seems to lose people and things habitually — sunglasses and keys, lovers and family members.) At loose ends, she has come to coastal California to regroup and to meet that legendary godmother. She soon finds herself enmeshed in a household of eccentrics: a formerly alcoholic cook and her irksome son, two quirky dog-walkers, a mysterious stalker, and of course, godmother Addison Early, a secretive and feisty bestselling mystery writer who once knew Rima's father well. Perhaps too well. Rima is on a mission to discover just what their relationship was all about.

That won't be easy. Over the years, Addison has fought fiercely to protect her work and her privacy, even as her passionate fans have become ever more intrusive. In this age of the Internet, with its blogs, chat rooms, and websites, its Wikipedia, false personas, and hidden identities, those fans have begun to take over her plotlines and the life of her famous fictional detective. For many of those fans, Maxwell Lane is more real than Addison herself. So Wit's End is also a highly original take on they way dedicated readers appropriate their favorite books, perhaps the one act of theft applauded the world over — except by authors. Word has it that Addison is so beleaguered, so distracted by her fans' Web postings, that she has writers block.

Traveling back into the past, firmly rooted in the present, Wit's End is storytelling at its best. It is also Karen Joy Fowler at her most subversive and witty, creating characters both oddball and endearing in a voice that is utterly and memorably her own.

Review:

"At the start of this quietly funny, slightly mysterious novel of discovering one's roots from bestseller Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club), 29-year-old Rima Lanisell visits her estranged godmother, Addison Early, in Addison's house by the sea, Wit's End, in storied Santa Cruz, Calif. Addison, the wildly successful but cautiously private author of the Maxwell Lane mysteries, was once the girlfriend of Rima's recently deceased father, Bim, for whom a character in the series is named. For each novel, Addison first constructs a dollhouse diorama that depicts what will be the principal murder scene, but her upcoming novel and its dollhouse are uncharacteristically delayed. By weeding through decades-old correspondence with eccentric fans and the contemporary channels of online forums, Rima slowly discovers the truth behind Addison's novels and that Rima herself is a topic of interest among Maxwell Lane devotees. As Fowler analyzes our modern-day relationship to novels and writers' relationship to their readers, the line between fiction and reality blurs — real people become characters in another's blog as fictional characters become real to the fans that fetishize them. Author tour. (Apr.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"'The Jane Austen Book Club' could not have been better designed or timed. Karen Joy Fowler's fourth novel appeared in 2004 at the intersection of two massive forces in American publishing: women's book clubs and the Austen revival. With its sharp wit and clever allusions to 'Emma' et al., the story rotated through a year's worth of meetings involving six members of a book club in California. If the... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review)

Review:

"[A] mystery that's barely a mystery but is every bit an absorbing and funny novel....[I]nsightful and engaging." Library Journal

Review:

"Fowler's clever insights eventually sink in as more profound than they initially seemed." Kirkus Reviews

Synopsis:

The author of The Jane Austen Book Club presents another highly inventive novel — one that ensnares readers in cunning deceptions, challenging them to separate the truth from fiction.

About the Author

Karen Joy Fowler, A PEN/Faulkner and Dublin IMPAC nominee, is the author of Sarah Canary, The Sweetheart Season, Black Glass: Short Fictions, and Sister Noon.

Product Details

ISBN:
9780399154751
Author:
Fowler, Karen Joy
Publisher:
Putnam Adult
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
General
Subject:
Authors
Subject:
Authorship
Publication Date:
May 2008
Binding:
Hardcover
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Dimensions:
8.37x5.72x1.16 in. .98 lbs.