Synopses & Reviews
"Ekaterina you were, and you were not at all. You were from a land far away, once upon a time and upon no time at all..."
So begins our friendly narrator, who happens to be dead. Ekaterina has just arrived in an unnamed city at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela with a pasteboard suitcase, a kerchief that covers her lack of hair, and little more than a rudimentary knowledge of English, the language in which she will eventually write Georgie Boy and her other phenomenal bestsellers. Ekaterina is guided throughout her adventures not only by the ghost-narrator who has mysterious motives of his own for meddling with her personal Fate Goddess but also by an "author" determined to bring her, in time, to his homeland, the Bodark Mountains. At every turn, Ekaterina's rise to fortune is rattled by her consuming appetite for pubescent boys. Her novel Georgie Boy earns her wealth enough to take over the top floor of an aging resort hotel in the Bodarks, as her idol, Nabokov, had taken over a suite in a Swiss resort hotel after the success of Lolita. Ekaterina is a masterwork of illusion and allusion, and like all of Donald Harington's novels it affords delight from beginning to end.
Review
"[A] literary tour de force....Grand entertainment from an author who's been too little known for too long: perhaps this zany homage to Nabokov (especially Lolita) will bring deserved attention to Harington's impressive body of work." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"We can be glad for Mr. Harington's book, whose intelligence and humor demonstrate that American fiction writing still has a pulse." Washington Post
Review
"A marvelously entertaining novel. Harington has outdone himself." Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"Superbly crafted, foxy, engaging, funny, joyous." Los Angeles Times
Review
"All this makes for a fair amount of clutter, but Harington's magical-realist view of the U.S., and his deep attachment to his 'Bodarks,' is so beguiling that the reader suspends impatience." Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
The newest resident of a faculty mansion inhabited by ghosts and filled with drunks, writer Ekaterina soon takes over the top floor of the Halfmoon Hotel in Arcata Springs, where she takes on pubescent lovers.
About the Author
Acclaimed by critics as "an undiscovered continent" (Fred Chappell) and "America's greatest unknown novelist" (Entertainment Weekly), Donald Harington is a brilliant creator of fictional worlds, rooted in his native Arkansas. His imagination is no less expansive than Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his language is rich in a uniquely American, southern idiom. Winner of the Robert Penn Warren Award, the Porter Prize, and the Heasley Prize, the Toby Press is delighted to be publishing With, his thirteenth novel, as well as three new editions of other novels in the Stay More cycle.