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A Novel in Stories
by Dylan Landis
A dazzling novel in stories from a master of the form that follows the Royal family across generations of obsession, betrayal, and reinvention.
For fans of Mary Gaitskill and Lauren Groff.
In postwar Paris, a boy is seduced by his mysterious nanny into the world of adult secrets. In 1950s New York City, a naïve caretaker struggles to protect her charge, a married woman paralyzed by her recent stroke, as new bruises appear each day on her body. In the 1970s, a fragile cousin wanders into the Royal family's jazz-soaked townhouse, where music, sex, and ruin intertwine. And at the heart of these stories is Rainey Royal herself, coming of age in Greenwich Village, inventing herself as an artist through the tumult of the '70s and '80s.
By turns shocking, erotic, and deeply humane, List of All Possible Desires is a haunting portrait of family and history—written with Landis's trademark beauty and precision.
"A dazzling cycle of stories revolving around a complicated, fascinating, talented young badass ... Other people write with words; Landis seems to write with mercury." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Dazzling, electrifying, and razor-sharp, this collection brilliantly expands Dylan Landis's New York of the 1970s and '80s, a world where fragile, defiant girls grow into clear-eyed, truth-seeking women. Gorgeously crafted and fearlessly told—I savored every page." —Natalie Baszile, author of Queen Sugar
"The Rainey Royal books are the greatest literary puzzle since the Neapolitan Quartet, full of complex relationships among women and within families, revealing their full meaning only once you place the final piece." —Pamela Redmond, New York Times bestselling author of Younger
This information about List of All Possible Desires 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.
Dylan Landis is the author of the novel Rainey Royal, a New York Times Editors' Choice, and the novel in stories Normal People Don't Live Like This, both in the Rainey Royal Cycle. Her work has appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and other anthologies. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in fiction and lives in Los Angeles.
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