The Pretty Girl: Novella and Stories

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Overview

From Victorian toy theatres to a painting with a mysterious story behind it to a graphic novelist's battle with the schizophrenia which causes her cartoon characters to march off the page, the novella and six stories in Debra Spark's fourth work of fiction, The Pretty Girl, revolve around artists, artistry, and the magical--sometimes malicious--deceptions they create. With settings that traverse New York's Lower East Side, Victorian London, Paris and Switzerland, Spark's stories twist and turn in mesmerizing ways as they reflect on the fictions we fabricate about and for friends, family, and strangers.

In one story, a woman finds her life unexpectedly dramatized on the stage; in another, ...

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Overview

From Victorian toy theatres to a painting with a mysterious story behind it to a graphic novelist's battle with the schizophrenia which causes her cartoon characters to march off the page, the novella and six stories in Debra Spark's fourth work of fiction, The Pretty Girl, revolve around artists, artistry, and the magical--sometimes malicious--deceptions they create. With settings that traverse New York's Lower East Side, Victorian London, Paris and Switzerland, Spark's stories twist and turn in mesmerizing ways as they reflect on the fictions we fabricate about and for friends, family, and strangers.

In one story, a woman finds her life unexpectedly dramatized on the stage; in another, a couple's reconnection with a family friend leads to a labyrinth of mysteries and miscommunications. In the tour-de-force "A Wedding Story," Simon Baal Shem, a charming five-inch rabbi found in a chocolate egg offers life advice in the form of Jewish stories. Gritty and elusive, Spark's stories work like the best magic tricks, seeming to defy the laws of reality even as they deftly extend and reinvigorate those laws. Readers who love magical realism, illusions, Jewish literature, and art, will be captivated by Spark's wonderfully textured The Pretty Girl.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Spark's imaginative collection of stories (after the novel Good for the Jews) offers quirky surprises at every turn, as ordinary characters transcend their mundane lives. In the titular novella, "The Pretty Girl," Midwesterner Andrea feels a special bond to her Great Aunt Rose and a painting, hanging in her aunt's Spartan New York apartment, of a "laughing, young woman with two raspberry-colored gloves," who seemed to say to her beholder, "Oh, you silly. Go away." Like Spark's other characters, Andrea is charmingly plain, making her fascination with the alluring painting (which Andrea calls "The Pretty Girl") and her reticent aunt an engaging narrative force. In the wake of Rose's death, Andrea discovers the source of the painting, and the story of a great love and its surprising consequences come to light. In "Conservation," a young man destined for stardom at a news network returns home years later as a disturbing enigma in dress and attitude, unsettling the tranquility of former friends. And in the surreal "A Wedding Story," socially inept 20-something Rachel Rubinstein finds a tiny, sagacious rabbi in an old chocolate egg discovered among her deceased grandmother's effects—"‘Shalom,' he called, half in warning, so she wouldn't bite further." The numerous shifting realities and transformations in these stories might devolve in the hands of a lesser writer, but Spark's controlled craft keeps the narrative tight and the pages turning. (Apr.)

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781935536185
  • Publisher: Four Way Books
  • Publication date: 4/10/2012
  • Pages: 330
  • Product dimensions: 5.90 (w) x 9.00 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author

DEBRA SPARK lives in Maine, and teaches at Colby and Warren Wilson Colleges.

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