Premium Members Get 10% Off and Earn Rewards Find Out More

In a Perfect World

Add to Wishlist

In a Perfect World

eBook

$6.99

View All Available Formats & Editions

eBook
$6.99

View All Available Formats & Editions

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.

WANT A NOOK? Explore Now

Buy As Gift

Related collections and offers

Overview

In a Perfect World is critically acclaimed writer Laura Kasischke’s new novel of marriage, motherhood, and the choices we make when we have no choices left. Kasischke, the author of The Life Before Her Eyes, tells the story of Jiselle, a young flight attendant who’s just settled into a fairy tale life with her new husband and stepchildren. But as a mysterious new illness spreads rapidly throughout the country, she begins to realize that her marriage, her stepchildren, and their perfect world are all in terrible danger . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061941825
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/06/2009
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	396 KB

About the Author

Laura Kasischke teaches in the MFA program at the University of Michigan. A winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry, she has published eight collections of poetry and ten novels, three of which have been made into films, including The Life Before Her Eyes.

What People are Saying About This

Jessica Anya Blau

“IN A PERFECT WORLD reveals astonishing and tender insight into human nature while exposing a terrifying, yet believable, world I’d never before imagined. This story will grasp onto your heart before swiftly carrying you away.”

Katrina Kittle

“From its haunting opening image to its riveting end, this is a tale of beauty, resilience, love, sacrifice, and even grace found in the most unlikely of places. In a truly ‘perfect world’ every book I read would inspire me like this one.”

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

Poet and novelist Kasischke finds beauty amid the apocalypse in her timely seventh novel. The Phoenix flu is sweeping the world, causing mass hysteria, arousing profound paranoia and inciting anti-American hatred worldwide. Jiselle, 32, is a jaded flight attendant and perpetual bridesmaid who says, “I do,” when handsome pilot Capt. Mark Dorn, a widower, offers her a vision of a perfect Midwestern family life far from her humdrum job and the dangers of the pandemic. The glitch is Mark's three minor children, who view Jiselle with derision, pity or outright hostility despite her best efforts to mother them. After the flu threat detains Mark overseas for months and then strikes close to home, Jiselle and her stepchildren must redefine their idea of family, community and their understanding of perfection and happiness. As their prospects of survival dwindle, the nascent family's fragile ties grow stronger. Kasischke's penchant for disconcerting but absorbing fiction is on display, as is her facility with language. Startling, sometimes violent images combine with strikingly dispassionate narration to create a fictional world where terror, beauty and chaos walk hand in hand. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Kasischke finds beauty amid the apocalypse in her timely seventh novel . . . Startling, sometimes violent images combine with strikingly dispassionate narration to create a fictional world where terror, beauty and chaos walk hand in hand.” — Publishers Weekly
“From its haunting opening image to its riveting end, this is a tale of beauty, resilience, love, sacrifice, and even grace found in the most unlikely of places. In a truly ‘perfect world’ every book I read would inspire me like this one.” — Katrina Kittle, author of The Kindness of Strangers
“IN A PERFECT WORLD reveals astonishing and tender insight into human nature while exposing a terrifying, yet believable, world I’d never before imagined. This story will grasp onto your heart before swiftly carrying you away.” — Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties
“[Kasischke]writes with worldly-wise profundity and sudden beauty but also sly humor . . .We’re helplessly drawn in by a slew of burning questions, with this one foremost: When can we expect a sequel…or is that nothing but a doomed hope?” — Elle
“This is a doomsday book in the form of a finely observed domestic drama, showing how dysfunctional relationships shift and soften in response to the looming menace . . . The reader may well come away with the odd, exhilarating feeling that a spell has both been cast and broken.” — Los Angeles Times

From the Publisher

IN A PERFECT WORLD reveals astonishing and tender insight into human nature while exposing a terrifying, yet believable, world I’d never before imagined. This story will grasp onto your heart before swiftly carrying you away.

Jessica Anya Blau

From its haunting opening image to its riveting end, this is a tale of beauty, resilience, love, sacrifice, and even grace found in the most unlikely of places. In a truly ‘perfect world’ every book I read would inspire me like this one.

Katrina Kittle

This is a doomsday book in the form of a finely observed domestic drama, showing how dysfunctional relationships shift and soften in response to the looming menace . . . The reader may well come away with the odd, exhilarating feeling that a spell has both been cast and broken.

|Los Angeles Times

[Kasischke]writes with worldly-wise profundity and sudden beauty but also sly humor . . .We’re helplessly drawn in by a slew of burning questions, with this one foremost: When can we expect a sequel…or is that nothing but a doomed hope?

Elle

This is a doomsday book in the form of a finely observed domestic drama, showing how dysfunctional relationships shift and soften in response to the looming menace . . . The reader may well come away with the odd, exhilarating feeling that a spell has both been cast and broken.

Los Angeles Times