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Published Apr 2008
352 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Set in contemporary Santa Cruz, Wit’s End opens as Rima Lanisell arrives at her godmother’s old Victorian mansion, weary from her recent losses—an inventive if at times irritating father, a beloved brother. (Indeed, Rima seems to lose people and things habitually—sunglasses and keys, lovers and family members.) At loose ends, she has come to coastal California to regroup and to meet that legendary godmother. She soon finds herself enmeshed in a household of eccentrics: a formerly alcoholic cook and her irksome son, two quirky dog-walkers, a mysterious stalker, and of course, godmother Addison Early, a secretive and feisty bestselling mystery writer who once knew Rima’s father well. Perhaps too well. Rima is on a mission to discover just what their relationship was all about.
That won’t be easy. Over the years, Addison has fought fiercely to protect her work and her privacy, even as her passionate fans have become ever more intrusive. In this age of the Internet, with its blogs, chat rooms, and websites, its Wikipedia, false personas, and hidden identities, those fans have begun to take over her plotlines and the life of her famous fictional detective. For many of those fans, Maxwell Lane is more real than Addison herself. So Wit’s End is also a highly original take on they way dedicated readers appropriate their favorite books, perhaps the one act of theft applauded the world over—except by authors. Word has it that Addison is so beleaguered, so distracted by her fans’ Web postings, that she has writers block.
Traveling back into the past, firmly rooted in the present, Wit’s End is storytelling at its best. It is also Karen Joy Fowler at her most subversive and witty, creating characters both oddball and endearing in a voice that is utterly and memorably her own.
"As Fowler analyzes our modern-day relationship to novels and writers' relationship to their readers, the line between fiction and reality blurs - real people become characters in another's blog as fictional characters become real to the fans that fetishize them." - Publishers Weekly.
"One of the most refreshing things about Fowler's witty novel is its currency. At one point, Addison remarks that today's novels are unreliable guides to daily life since no one in them watches television. Indeed, Fowler's own characters write blogs, read message boards, watch YouTube, and consult (and even edit) Wikipedia. This insightful and engaging book is recommended for all public and academic libraries." - Library Journal.
"Only astute readers will wade through the sometimes annoying barrage of disjointed, quirky twists to find the hints planted .... A prickly, computer-age take on the mystery genre ..... Fowler's clever insights eventually sink in as more profound than they initially seemed." - Kirkus Reviews.
"She has a voice like no other, lyrical, shrewd and addictive, with a quiet deadpan humor that underlies almost every sentence." - Newsday - Beth Gutcheon.
"What strikes one first is the voice: robust, sly, witty, elegant, unexpected and never boring. Here is a novelist who absolutely comprehends the pleasures of imagination and transformation." - The New York Times Book Review - Margot Livesey
This information about Wit's End 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: Nathan Quintanilla
Karen Joy Fowler is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels and three short story collections. Her 2004 novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list and was a New York Times Notable Book. Fowler's previous novel, Sister Noon, was a finalist for the 2001 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Her debut novel, Sarah Canary, won the Commonwealth medal for best first novel by a Californian, was listed for the Irish Times International Fiction Prize as well as the Bay Area Book Reviewers Prize, and was a New York Times Notable Book. Fowler's short story collection Black Glass won the World Fantasy Award in 1999, and her collection What I Didn't See won the World Fantasy Award in 2011. Her most recent novel We Are All Completely Beside ...
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Karen Joy Fowler's Website
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