Description: The paths of an orphaned girl in 1971 and a sixty-something recluse in 2016 entwine in a novel of damaged souls and salvaged hope.
Brief description: Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of a novel, Paradise Close; six acclaimed collections of poetry, most recently Madrigalia: New & Selected Poems; and The Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotations of Contemporary Poetry, a collection of poetry history and criticism. She was a 2014 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. Spaar has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Library of Virginia Award for Poetry, and a Rona Jaffe Award, among other honors and awards. She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, where for many years she directed the MFA program.
Review Quotes: Lisa Russ Spaar's debut novel (how is this a debut novel?) is a soulful, sexy, extraordinarily lyrical meditation on things that matter--art, aging, love, desire, the body, and the brief, passionate encounters that bind us to each other and sometimes save our lives. Beginning with a fragile, tender-hearted teenage orphan and spiraling into an ever-growing universe of enchanting outcasts, Paradise Close is part romantic fantasy, part literary dreamscape, and always a luscious and rewarding encounter with language. If this is what happens when poets write novels, they should all write them.--Eleanor Henderson, author of "The Twelve-Mile Straight" and "Everything I Have Is Yours"