Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jun 2017
304 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
An urgent, propulsive novel about a woman learning to negotiate her ailment and its various aftereffects via the simulacrum of a perfect romantic relationship.
In Catherine Lacey's ambitious second novel we are introduced to Mary, a young woman living in New York City and struggling to cope with a body that has betrayed her. All but paralyzed with pain, Mary seeks relief from a New Agey treatment called Pneuma Adaptive Kinesthesia, PAKing for short. And, remarkably, it works. But PAKing is prohibitively expensive and Mary is dead broke. So she scours Craigslist for fast-cash jobs and finds herself applying for the "Girlfriend Experiment," the brainchild of an eccentric actor, Kurt Sky, who is determined to find the perfect relationship, even if that means paying different women to fulfill distinctive roles. Mary is hired as the "Emotional Girlfriend", certainly better than the "Anger Girlfriend" or the "Maternal Girlfriend", and is pulled into Kurt's ego-driven and messy attempt at human connection.
Told in her signature spiraling prose, The Answers is full of the singular yet universal insights readers have come to expect from Lacey. It is a gorgeous hybrid of the plot- and the idea-driven novel that will leave you reeling.
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BookBrowse Review
"The Answers is a brave attempt at something new - part sci-fi, part technological thriller, part romance. But as this genre mashup attempts to explore the scientific implications of modern love, it fails to coalesce into something tangible and real. Hardly any of the characters are likable or engaging, and the book shifts perspectives too often without warning, asking readers to become invested in characters they barely know." - Matt Grant
Other Reviews
"Starred Review. Lacey displays an exceptional ability to articulate the elusiveness of knowing others, as well as the desire to find meaning and trust within. " - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A singular novel; as unexpected as it is rich." - Kirkus
"Recommended for those who appreciate thought-provoking and imaginative literary fiction." - Library Journal
"Surreal, thought-provoking, and intriguingly untidy" - Booklist
"An adept novel...Lacey digs into the choppy turf beneath a woman's relationship to her body, her identity and her search for balance between independence and meaningful relationships...Lacey doesn't give us answers, but she sure gives us a wild story with a memorable protagonist." - Shelf Awareness
This information about The Answers was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Willy Somma
Catherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, Pew and Biography of X, and the short story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. She has been a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, The Believer, and elsewhere.
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