Synopses & Reviews
"The World of Rae English is a rare novel of wry eloquence. Its remarkable sentences delineate a fifties and sixties world full of disguises, and we watch its heroine blunder through the task of unmasking those around her, past and present. A wonderful book."Joan Silber
"Lucy Rosenthal writes with the mirth and bite of the great Peter De Vries. I am amazed at how much fun she seems to be having while she fillets the pretentious and punctures the self-inflated. The smart reader will know enough to get out of her line of fire."Billy Collins
Rae English, a smart and witty young woman, is drawn to secretive men. It is the still straitlaced early sixties, the era of Mad Men where women are expected to be married and pretty. After a divorce from a disgraced politician, Rae relocates to Iowa City, hoping to find or conceal herself as a writer and to rediscover love.
Lucy Rosenthal is the author of the novel The Ticket Out. The recipient of a Pulitzer Fellowship in Critical Writing, she has edited the anthologies Great American Love Stories, The World Treasury of Love Stories, and The Eloquent Short Story: Varieties of Narration. She is on the writing faculty of Sarah Lawrence College and has also taught in the creative writing programs of Columbia and New York University. She lives in New York City.
Synopsis
Rae English, a divorcee drawn to secretive men, goes to Iowa City to write a novel, hide, and rediscover love.
Synopsis
Fiction. THE WORLD OF RAE ENGLISH is set in the sixties—the era of Mad Men—relocated from Manhattan to Iowa City. This second novel by Lucy Rosenthal is about a young woman who is recovering from a marriage to a disgraced politician. Once a rising political star, he has been brought down in a scandal and packed off to prison. After this, Rae English abandons New York for the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop where she hopes to find herself as a writer and to investigate the possibilities of romance in the heartland. Funny, wryly observed and tinged with heartache, this is an unputdownable novel written in a brilliant voice that is at once tender and whip smart.
About the Author
Lucy Rosenthal is the author of the novels The Ticket Out and THE WORLD OF RAE ENGLISH (Black Lawrence Press, 2014). The recipient of a Pulitzer Fellowship in Critical Writing, she has edited the anthologies Great American Love Stories, World Treasury of Love Stories, and The Eloquent Short Story: Varieties of Narration. She is on the writing faculty at Sarah Lawrence College and has also taught in the creative writing programs of Columbia and New York University. She lives in New York City.