Description:
In Catherine Lacey's ambitious second novel we are introduced to Mary, a young woman living in New York City struggling with a body that has betrayed her. All but paralyzed with pain, Mary seeks relief from a New Age-y treatment called Pneuma Adaptive Kinesthesia, PAKing for short. And, remarkably, it works.
But PAKing is expensive and Mary is broke. So she scours Craigslist for fast-cash jobs and finds the "Girlfriend Experiment," the brainchild of an eccentric and narcissistic actor determined to find the perfect relationship--even if it means paying women to fill different roles. Mary is hired as the "emotional girlfriend"--certainly better than the "anger girlfriend" or the "maternal girlfriend"--and is pulled into an ego-driven and messy attempt at human connection.
Told in Lacey's signature spiraling prose, The Answers is full of singular yet universal insights. It is a gorgeous hybrid of the plot- and idea-driven novel that will leave you reeling.
Brief description:
Catherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, and Pew and the short story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. She has been a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, the New York Times, The Believer, and elsewhere
Review Quotes:
" A darkly funny, tartly feminist look at the tender state of our bodies and souls in the Information Age...[and] the absurdity of a culture that persists in thinking that enlightenment is a matter of the right purchase, hashtag, or Google search."
-- "Vogue"