Synopses & Reviews
The people who orbit around Renn Ivins, an actor of Harrison Ford-like stature — his girlfriends, his children, his ex-wives, those on the periphery — long to experience the glow of his flame. Anna and Will are Renn's grown children, struggling to be authentic versions of themselves in a world where they are seen as less important extensions of their father. They are both drawn to and repelled by the man who overshadows every part of them. Most of us can imagine the perks of celebrity, but Little Known Facts offers a clear-eyed story of its effects — the fallout of fame and fortune on family members and others who can neither fully embrace nor ignore the superstar in their midst. With Little Known Facts, Christine Sneed emerges as one of the most insightful chroniclers of our celebrity-obsessed age, telling a story of influence and affluence, of forging identity and happiness and a moral compass; the question being, if we could have anything on earth, would we choose correctly?
Review
“Impressive...hypnotic...hard to put down....Little Known Facts is juicy enough to appeal to our prurience but smart enough not to make us feel dirty afterward....Sneed is such a gifted writer....Her depiction of both proximity to celebrity and celebrity itself had me totally convinced.” Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times Book Review
Review
"I grabbed Christine Sneed's novel Little Known Facts on my way out the door this weekend and ate it up. It's a great canny read: wry, observant, inventive in style, rich in character. Christine Sneed knows her Hollywood, but more than that, she knows her people." Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins and National Book Award finalist for The Zero
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"An ensnaring first novel that delves into the complex challenges and anguish of living with and in the shadow of celebrity. Sneed's wit, curiosity, empathy, and ability to divine the perfect detail propel this psychologically exquisite, superbly realized novel of intriguing, caricature-transcending characters and predicaments....As Sneed illuminates each facet of her percussively choreographed plot via delectably slant disclosures — overheard conversations, snooping, tabloids, confessions under duress, and journal entries, among them — she spotlights 'little known facts' about the cost of fame, our erotic obsession with movie-star power, and where joy can be found." Booklist (starred review)
Review
"The gravitational pull of fame in a celebrity-obsessed culture informs this smart, fresh debut about a family living in the shadow cast by its larger-than-life patriarch." Bonnie Jo Campbell, National Book Award finalist for American Salvage
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“Goes beyond the tabloid headlines....Sneed effectively blurs the line between fact and fiction and brings each character to life.” Kirkus Reviews
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"Christine Sneed's compelling first novel, Little Known Facts, reads with the effortlessness of a page-turner. The story is located at an intersection of romance — make that romances — fame, and physical beauty, and yet Sneed's insight into her credibly drawn characters combined with the novel's multi-faceted construction make the story anything but formulaic, and confer upon its subjects the depth and grace of the author's lucid prose and book's imaginative construction." Stuart Dybek, author of I Sailed With Magellan
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"Christine Sneed's Little Known Facts is a contemporary, culturally vibrant novel brimming with superb dialog, a sharp sense of scene and narrative pace, emotional/psychological clarity, and a bracing humanity. A blazing piece of work." Floyd Skloot, author of In the Shadow of Memory
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“[An] impressive debut…a Hollywood tale that aspires to complicate the traditional Hollywood narrative.” Minneapolis Star Tribune
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"I tore through this instantly engaging box of literary candy in a weekend and immediately thought: TV series, HBO or AMC-style." MSN
Review
“Five years ago, Salman Rushdie was so impressed with fiction writer Christine Sneed that he included her work in 2008's Best American Short Stories anthology. But the Evanston resident has kept a low-profile, occasionally producing more short stories in the years since. That's about to change though, with the publication of Sneed's elegant first novel, Little Known Facts.” Chicago Magazine
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"Sneed writes with authority and deftness." New City
Review
"I really, really loved Little Known Facts. From the point f view of those closest to Hollywood super star Renn Ivins we see that flaws and foibles of the airbrushed lives of the rich and famous and the people closest to them. This is a deeply sensitive novel that takes the reader into a world of usually glamorized or carefully spun by publicists, revealing the havoc wreaked on most of the lives of ex's and offspring and lovers and the stars themselves. This insightful novel avoids moralizing, though in the end the moral might well be 'Be careful what you wish for." Cathy Langer, Tattered Cover
About the Author
Christine Sneed has a creative writing MFA from Indiana University and has lived in Chicago and Evanston, IL since 1998. She teaches creative writing at DePaul University, Northwestern University and Pacific University. Her story collection, Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry, won AWP's 2009 Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, first-fiction category, was named the Chicago Writer's Association Book of the Year, and has been chosen as the recipient of Ploughshares' 2011 first-book prize, the John C. Zacharis Award. It was also long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and named one of the seven best books of the year by Time Out Chicago. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Best American Short Stories, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, Ploughshares, Southern Review, Massachusetts Review, New England Review, Notre Dame Review, and a number of other journals. Visit her web site at www.christinesneed.com.