From Publishers Weekly This imaginative debut takes a profound look at the connection between words on the page and the infinite interpretations for a reader. For heroine Flora Dempsey, the father-daughter bond is a further complication. Flora moves back to her picturesque New England hometown after the death of her father, former president of the town's local college, where she discovers that her inheritance includes the role of literary executor. Lewis Dempsey, an academic writer, has left behind a manuscript of erotic poems written to Cynthia, his lover, whose existence is a surprise to Flora. Cynthia, meanwhile, attempts to become part of Flora's life, wanting friendship—and publication of the poems. Overwhelmed, Flora navigates her father's poetry, retreats into her memories of childhood and her parents' divorce, and poignantly contemplates the acts of reading and writing. Pouncey has skillfully created a portrait of smalltown academia, where the relationships between reader and text are just as elusive and complex as the relationships between father and daughter, husband and wife, or between two lovers. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Flora, a twentysomething magazine editor, enjoys her visits with her long-divorced, revered literary critic, former college president father, but she has never bothered to read the book that made him famous, Reader as Understander, or the new, unpublished poems he’s entrusted her with. When he dies unexpectedly, Flora is stunned to find herself designated as his literary executor. In a miasma of regret and grief, she quits her job and returns to her stifling New England hometown, Darwin, much to her irascible mother’s dismay. There Flora discovers that her father’s poems were inspired by his love for an art historian fond of flowers and bright colors who is anxious to see the lyrics in print. Flora––testy, rude, “wolfish,” and terribly lonely—enrages everyone as she struggles to understand all that she’s lost and found. Although poorly paced, Pouncey’s first novel is nonetheless sparkling, shrewd, and at times hilarious in its parsing of family dynamics, academic competition, the solace of literature, the aggression of the blogosphere, and what it truly means to be a “perfect reader” and a generous soul. --Donna Seaman
更多信息……