FLIMSY LITTLE PLASTIC MIRACLES


A bold, arresting new work of fiction from the acclaimed author of Everything Matters!

In this tour de force of imagination, Ron Currie asks why literal veracity means more to us than deeper truths, creating yet again a genre-bending novel that will at once dazzle, move, and provoke.

The protagonist of Ron Currie, Jr.’s new novel has a problem­—or rather, several of them. He’s a writer whose latest book was destroyed in a fire. He’s mourning the death of his father, and has been in love with the same woman since grade school,

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A bold, arresting new work of fiction from the acclaimed author of Everything Matters!

In this tour de force of imagination, Ron Currie asks why literal veracity means more to us than deeper truths, creating yet again a genre-bending novel that will at once dazzle, move, and provoke.

The protagonist of Ron Currie, Jr.’s new novel has a problem­—or rather, several of them. He’s a writer whose latest book was destroyed in a fire. He’s mourning the death of his father, and has been in love with the same woman since grade school, a woman whose beauty and allure is matched only by her talent for eluding him. Worst of all, he’s not even his own man, but rather an amalgam of fact and fiction from Ron Currie’s own life. When Currie the character exiles himself to a small Caribbean island to write a new book about the woman he loves, he eventually decides to fake his death, which turns out to be the best career move he’s ever made. But fame and fortune come with a price, and Currie learns that in a time of twenty-four-hour news cycles, reality TV, and celebrity Twitter feeds, the one thing the world will not forgive is having been told a deeply satisfying lie.

What kind of distinction could, or should, be drawn between Currie the author and Currie the character?  Or between the book you hold in your hands and the novel embedded in it? Whatever the answers, Currie, an inventive writer always eager to test the boundaries of storytelling in provocative ways, has essential things to impart along the way about heartbreak, reality, grief, deceit, human frailty, and blinding love.

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  • Viking Adult
  • Hardcover
  • February 2013
  • 352 Pages
  • 9780670025343

Buy the Book

$26.95

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About Ron Currie Jr.

Ron Currie Jr. is a native of Waterville, Maine, and whose fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, The Sun, Other Voices and Night Train. His stories have won prizes in The World’s Best Short Story competition and have been shortlisted for the Fish International Short Story award and Swink magazine’s Emerging Writer Award. God is Dead is his first novel.

Praise

“So blisteringly funny that I laughed as I hadn’t laughed in years:  we’re talking demonic, unstoppable, don’t sit next to that guy howls.”The Washington Post

“Resounds with humor and insight into love, loss, and reality…An astonishing feat of innovation with surprises on nearly every page, Currie’s entrancing novel marks the work of a scathingly comic virtuoso.”ALA Booklist

“A postmodern love story, self-consciously playful…things get both crazy and interesting…moving and hilarious.”Kirkus Reviews

“A metafictional tangle of debauchery and technological anxiety…Told in a bouncy, pinball style, this darkly droll novel is never boring.”Publishers Weekly

 

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