Synopses & Reviews
Review
<DIV><DIV>“[Prose] conveys every scene with psychedelic gusto. . . . This is a lollapalooza of a novel.” —<i>Publishers Weekly</i></div><DIV><BR>“Lively and upbeat.” —<i>Library Journal</i></div></div>
Synopsis
A novel about learning to live in a world stranger than any tabloid headlineThough she’s written dispatches from across the globe—covering the Loch Ness monster, live dinosaurs, and the ever-enigmatic yeti—Vera Perl never leaves the offices of This Week, a supermarket tabloid covering the universe’s stranger side. Her reporting is done entirely inside her own head, and now she’s contemplating a Bigfoot exposé that will astonish even the most jaded conspiracy theorist. No one is better than Vera at imagining these weird, wild stories, because more than anything, she wants them to be true.
One day she dreams up a scoop about two Brooklyn children whose lemonade stand has amazing curative properties, and is shocked to learn that the children she invented actually exist. The resulting lawsuit sends this master of hoaxes into a very real tailspin, and a search for something even more elusive than Bigfoot: solace.
Synopsis
A novel about learning to live in a world stranger than any tabloid headline Though she's written dispatches from across the globe-covering the Loch Ness monster, live dinosaurs, and the ever-enigmatic yeti-Vera Perl never leaves the offices of This Week, a supermarket tabloid covering the universe's stranger side. Her reporting is done entirely inside her own head, and now she's contemplating a Bigfoot expos that will astonish even the most jaded conspiracy theorist. No one is better than Vera at imagining these weird, wild stories, because more than anything, she wants them to be true. One day she dreams up a scoop about two Brooklyn children whose lemonade stand has amazing curative properties, and is shocked to learn that the children she invented actually exist. The resulting lawsuit sends this master of hoaxes into a very real tailspin, and a search for something even more elusive than Bigfoot: solace.
Synopsis
From the "wonderfully quirky imagination" of the New York Times-bestselling author: A tabloid reporter is surprised to find magic in a mundane world (The New York Times).
Vera Pearl is a staff writer for This Week, a supermarket tabloid which trades in the bizarre and the absurd--though rarely, if ever, the true. No one is better than Vera at imagining these weird, wild stories, because more than anything, she wants them to be real.
During one particularly slow week, Vera takes a photograph snapped by a colleague showing two children selling lemonade outside their Brooklyn home and drafts up a scoop to fit the snap, the story of two enterprising children who have discovered--and are profiting off of--the literal Fountain of Youth. By astonishing coincidence--or perhaps by magic--the details she concocts about the children (except for the properties of the tap water) turn out to be true, and hundreds of miracle-seekers descend upon this modern Lourdes-in-Flatbush.
The resulting lawsuit sends this master of hoaxes into a very real tailspin: she is fired, her estranged husband flies in from Los Angeles to whisk away their precocious young daughter, and Vera takes off for Arizona to attend a meeting of the Cryptobiological Society, hoping for evidence of their furry quarry, Bigfoot. Just one glance, and Vera's longing to finally transcend the quotidian may come true . . .
About the Author
Francine Prose is the author of sixteen novels, including A Changed Man, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel, a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. A former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Prose is a highly regarded critic and essayist, and has taught literature and writing for more than twenty years at major universities. She is a distinguished writer in residence at Bard College, and she lives in New York City.