Jackson’s prose is quicker than a mongoose, sharper than a scalpel-and full of read-aloud sentences. She takes the familiar and makes it fantastical and then makes it familiar again. A premise so unlikely you could never describe it and writing so beautiful you could never believe it. “ Don’t I Know You? is full of surprises in the best possible way. “They may do the work, but we’re the ones who author their fame.” “Stars can only exist at the point where their public roles and our imaginations meet,” the author argues. Although cast with familiar names, the stories are all inventions-just as celebrity itself is a form of fiction. With wit, insight and impressive craft, Don’t I Know You? portrays a culture in which stars have invaded our psyches. These interlocking stories follow her life from age 17 (when she attends a writing workshop led by a young but already philandering John Updike) through heartbroken bohemia (Joni Mitchell offers timely advice), a decade of marriage, and a zesty post-divorce phase when she embarks on a wilderness canoe trip with Taylor Swift, Leonard Cohen, and Karl Ove Knausgaard. This is what happens to Rose McEwan, a journalist and writer for hire who keeps having strange encounters with famous people. What if some of the artists we feel as if we know-Neil Young, Meryl Streep, Keith Richards, Bill Murray-turned up in the course of our daily lives? On the bus, at the cottage, or for a family funeral? Fiction debut published September 2016 by Flatiron Books, NY.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |