The Great Bravura: A Novel

by Jill Dearman

Overview

Since adolescence, Bravura and salt of the earth Susie have been partners in magic and best friends, as well as occasional bedmates. But when the two performers hire the mysterious and alluring Lena as a third banana to jazz up the act, Bravura falls madly in love. Lena believes in magic—and not just the rabbit-out-of-a hat kind. She encourages Bravura to believe in her own supernatural powers, and when Susie balks, conflict ensues. Things really go south during the classic “Disappearing Box” act, when Susie disappears for real. With her pal presumed dead, and Bravura the prime suspect, the magician must act quickly to find Susie—hopefully alive! To prove her innocence, Bravura must uncover the holes in her own story—even if it means incriminating herself, and her precious Lena, in the process.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631529894
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	11/03/2015
Pages:	203
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Jill Dearman is the author of Bang the Keys (Penguin), a book for writers, as well as Queer Astrology for Men and Queer Astrology for Women (St. Martins), which will be reissued by MacMillan. She is a broadly published journalist and award-winning prose writer whose work has been published in New York Stories, North Atlantic Review, The Portland Review, Lilith, and numerous other publications. A native New Yorker, mystic-about-town, and lifelong film fanatic, she enjoys taking imaginative forays along the seedy side of the street. For more, visit www.jilldearman.com.

Editorial Reviews

03/28/2016
Dearman's inspired if flawed first novel charts the efforts of a brash female magician in 1948 to reconcile her feelings for two very different women. The Great Bravura, daughter of renowned con artist Señor Bravura, performs a successful magic act at the Club Algeria in New York City with her faithful assistant—and sometimes lover—Susie, a country girl with an overly stylized Brooklyn accent. When the club owner tells them that the routine needs new blood, Bravura and Susie audition for an assistant and meet the mysterious Lena, with whom Bravura is instantly smitten. A romantic relationship quickly develops, with Susie becoming the third wheel, so when Susie vanishes from the Disappearing Box contraption, it's suspected that Bravura had a hand in dispatching her former best friend. Lena, who's a strange combination of smoldering temptress (complete with a cultish father figure and two lesbian mothers) and recalcitrant child, tries to lead Bravura down a dangerous path, but the magician eventually realizes that she must go back to her own disastrous past—namely, her father's betrayal of her—to find clues to Susie's disappearance and her own redemption. Journalist Dearman (Bang the Keys) hams up the period-specific dialogue, cheapening what could have been an intriguing love story spiked with crime. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Brutal and magical and sexy as all hell. Dearman’s noir voice shatters boundaries I never knew existed.”

—Augusten Burroughs, New York Times best-selling author of Running With Scissors, Dry, and Magical Thinking

“A rich, noirish picture of olde New York with a punk sensibility that rocks the senses. Dearman’s characters are twisted, doomed, and filled with a lust for life.”

—Roberta Bayley, editor of Punk Magazine and author of Punk, Patti Smith, and Blank Generation Revisited

“Sapphically ardent, meta-absurd, and Nin-sexy all at once, Jill Dearman’s tale is a triumph of mysterious pleasures. Think of it as a Colette martini with a drop of Robbe-Grillet vermouth and a Jeanette Winterson olive.”

—Michael Atkinson, Village Voice and Movieline film critic, author of Hemingway Deadlights

“The Great Bravura straddles two worlds: her feet are firmly planted on earth, among a gritty ragtag group of early-20th century circus performers, while her hands reach for the stars, drawing the reader into a magical mystery realm where fantasy and sorcery are commonplace. Dearman builds on the tension created by the two milieus bumping into each other on the page to ultimately create a morality tale reminiscent of another era—the tragedies of ancient Greece.”

—Aaron Krach, artist, journalist, and author of Half-Life

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