Synopses & Reviews
Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. "In this hilarious and poignant tour de force, our hero is caught in a maze of simulacra, the mirrored hallways of America gone mad. The hero's quest is to smash the mirrors around him--will his sword work? Could a guitar's chords shatter the glass with its rising duende? How can he demolish the specular artifice to find the scene of his real selves? But what is the real? And how do we get there, when there is no one to drive the car"--Eleni Sikelianos. "In Peter Grandbois' `hybrid' memoir the materials of his suburban anomie are cut apart and thrust into arresting and disturbing juxtapositions. Passages of spiky adrenalin play against a melancholic, duende-driven introspection as identity is assembled and re-assembled in a strobe-lit chamber"--Sven Birkerts.
About the Author
Peter Grandbois is the author of The Gravedigger (Chronicle Books, 2006), a Borders "Original Voices" and Barnes and Noble "Discover Great New Writers" selection, as well as THE ARSENIC LOBSTER: A HYBRID MEMOIR, published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2009. His essays and short fiction have appeared in numerous magazines and recently received an honorable mention for the 2007 Pushcart Prize. In addition, his translation of San Juan: Memoir of a City was recently nominated for a PEN Translation award. He is a professor of creative writing and contemporary literature at California State University in Sacramento.