The paper wasp : a novel

Title:

Author:

Summary:

In small-town Michigan, Abby Graven leads a solitary life. Once a bright student on the cusp of a promising art career, she now languishes in her childhood home, trudging to and from her job as a supermarket cashier. Each day she is taunted from the magazine racks by the success of her former best friend Elise, a rising Hollywood starlet whose life in pictures Abby obsessively scrapbooks. At night Abby escapes through the films of her favorite director, Auguste Perren, a cult figure known for his creative institute the Rhizome. Inspired by Perren, Abby draws fantastical storyboards based on her often premonitory dreams, a visionary gift she keeps hidden. When Abby encounters Elise again at their high school reunion, she is surprised and warmed that Elise still considers her not only a friend but a brilliant storyteller and true artist. Elise's unexpected faith in Abby reignites in her a dormant hunger, and when Elise offhandedly tells Abby to look her up if she's ever in LA, Abby soon arrives on her doorstep. There, Abby discovers that although Elise is flourishing professionally, behind her glossy magazine veneer she is lonely and disillusioned. Ever the supportive friend, Abby becomes enmeshed in Elise's world, even as she guards her own dark secret and burning desire for greatness. As she edges closer to Elise, the Rhizome, and her own artistic ambitions, the dynamic shifts between the two friends--until Abby can see only one way to grasp the future that awaits her.

Edition:

First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition.

First edition.

Physical Description:

289 pages ; 22 cm

Genre:

Psychological fiction.

Thrillers (Fiction)

Subject Term:

Female friendship -- Fiction.

Actresses -- Fiction.

Artists -- Fiction.

Self-realization in women -- Fiction.

Publisher:

Grove Press,

Publication Date:

2019

ISBN:

9780802129413

Publication Information:

New York : Grove Press, 2019.

Call Number:

ACAMPOR

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003408781	Adult Fiction	ACAMPOR	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

An electrifying debut novel from the acclaimed author of The Wonder Garden, The Paper Wasp is a riveting knife-edge story of two women's dark friendship of twisted ambition set against the backdrop of contemporary Hollywood

When Abby encounters Elise again at their high school reunion, she is surprised and warmed that Elise still considers her not only a friend but a brilliant storyteller and true artist. Elise's unexpected faith in Abby reignites in her a dormant hunger, and when Elise offhandedly tells Abby to look her up if she's ever in LA, Abby soon arrives on her doorstep. There, Abby discovers that although Elise is flourishing professionally, behind her glossy magazine veneer she is lonely and disillusioned. Ever the supportive friend, Abby becomes enmeshed in Elise's world, even as she guards her own dark secret and burning desire for greatness. As she edges closer to Elise, the Rhizome, and her own artistic ambitions, the dynamic shifts between the two friends--until Abby can see only one way to grasp the future that awaits her.

The Paper Wasp is a thrilling, unexpected journey into the psyche and imagination of a woman determined to fulfill her destiny from one of our most unique and incisive writers.

Author Notes

Lauren Acampora is the author of The Wonder Garden , winner of the GLCA New Writers Award and a finalist for the New England Book Award; The Paper Wasp, longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize; and The Hundred Waters, named a Best Book of 2022 by Vogue. She is a 2021 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction from The New York Foundation for the Arts. Her writing has appeared in Paris Review, Guernica, The New York Times Book Review, and LitHub, among other places. She lives in Westchester County, New York with her husband, artist Thomas Doyle, and their daughter.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Acampora's debut novel (following collection The Wonder Garden) is an unsettling and surreal excavation of the boundless depths of the human psyche. Abby Graven, once valedictorian of her high school class, is a 28-year-old college dropout, living at her parents' home in Michigan and plagued by hyperrealistic and fantastical dreams in the vein of the dark movies she loves. When she decides to go to her 10-year high school reunion, it is with the hopes of seeing her former best friend Elise Van Dijk, now a rising actress in Hollywood, whose ascent Abby has been compulsively documenting. Elise is effervescent when she sees Abby again, making a throwaway comment that Abby should call her if Abby's ever in L.A. Months later, Abby takes Elise up on that offer. Though clearly thrown, Elise welcomes Abby into her home and soon offers her a job as her personal assistant. But the more intimately Abby becomes intertwined with Elise's life, the more she realizes how insecure and unstable her friend truly is. Meanwhile, Abby's dreams grow more and more bizarre, making it difficult for her to distinguish them from reality, with eventually catastrophic results. Acampora's writing is gorgeous and renders with precision and clarity the spiral of Abby's increasingly disorienting world of obsession and hallucinatory imagery. The result is a piercing, disquieting novel. Agent: Bill Clegg, the Clegg Agency. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Review

DEBUT High school best friends Abby and Elise have become polar opposites in the ten years leading up to their high school reunion. Abby, a brilliant artist whose gift for premonitory dreams hides in plain sight on her canvases, lives with her parents and plods through her cashier job at a Michigan superstore, hoarding every detail about Elise that's printed in the tabloids. Hollywood starlet Elise's glam life leaves her wanting more and more. Both women are obsessed with the legendary director Auguste Perren, whose creative institute fosters a cultlike following. When Elise tosses off a casual invitation for Abby to visit her in California "someday," Abby abandons her life in the Midwest, heads to Hollywood, and insinuates herself into Elise's world of wealth, insecurity, and addiction. As Elise's life skids out of control and her dependence on Abby intensifies, Abby's grip on her own vision of reality gains a terrifying power. VERDICT Acampora's linked short story collection, The Wonder Garden, electrified literary critics, and this deeply disturbing, wildly inventive, and completely unpredictable debut novel is sure to do the same. Abby and Elise will be haunting readers' dreams long after the last page. [See Prepub Alert, 12/3/18.]-Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.