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Title details for Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler - Available

Wit's End

A Novel

by Karen Joy Fowler
Bernadette Dunne
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

In this novel of mystery, intrigue, and virtual reality, Rima Lanisell is at loose ends after the loss of her father and brother. Hoping to regroup, she arrives at her godmother’s old Victorian mansion in Santa Cruz, California. Addison Early is a secretive and feisty best-selling mystery writer who once knew Rima’s father well—perhaps too well. Rima is on a mission to discover just what their relationship was. That won’t be easy. Addison has fought fiercely to protect her privacy, even as her passionate fans have become ever more intrusive. Thanks to the Internet, with its blogs, chat rooms, false personas, and hidden identities, fans have begun to take over her plotlines and the life of her famous fictional detective. Word has it that Addison is so beleaguered by her fans’ Web postings that she has writer’s block.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 1, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781481537698
      • File size: 244301 KB
      • Duration: 08:28:57

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Text Difficulty: 9-12

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 28, 2008
      At the start of this quietly funny, slightly mysterious novel of discovering one's roots from bestseller Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club), 29-year-old Rima Lanisell visits her estranged godmother, Addison Early, in Addison's house by the sea, Wit's End, in storied Santa Cruz, Calif. Addison, the wildly successful but cautiously private author of the Maxwell Lane mysteries, was once the girlfriend of Rima's recently deceased father, Bim, for whom a character in the series is named. For each novel, Addison first constructs a dollhouse diorama that depicts what will be the principal murder scene, but her upcoming novel and its dollhouse are uncharacteristically delayed. By weeding through decades-old correspondence with eccentric fans and the contemporary channels of online forums, Rima slowly discovers the truth behind Addison's novels and that Rima herself is a topic of interest among Maxwell Lane devotees. As Fowler analyzes our modern-day relationship to novels and writers' relationship to their readers, the line between fiction and reality blurs\x97real people become characters in another's blog as fictional characters become real to the fans that fetishize them. Author tour.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This story within a story within a story demands a clever narrator. Thankfully, Bernadette Dunne has the skill to pull it off. Twenty-nine-year-old Rima Lanisell is visiting her godmother, the famous and eccentric mystery writer Addison Early. Rima is trying to discern the truth about her late father's relationship with Addison and whether he was connected to an old murder. She's plagued by the continually blurring line between Addison's reality and her writing and with how she fits in her own skin. Bernadette Dunne's narration is crisp as she moves in and out of the past, among characters, and within email and blogs. Her strongest portrayals are those of the protagonists. Addison has an elderly, shaky, yet strong-sounding voice, and Rima's thoughts and plans have a questioning, sometimes tormented, tone. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Text Difficulty:9-12

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