Francine Prose, Author Holt McDougal $14 (256p) ISBN 978-0-8050-4896-4
Wonderfully comic satire of a lonely woman involved in a New Age feminist group. (Jan.)
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Francine Prose. Harper, $26.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-239783-6
The story of Prose’s (Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932) latest novel is the story of Mister Monkey, a regrettable children’s musical, itself based on the unlikely success of a (fictional) novel written several decades earlier by a Vietnam...
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Francine Prose. Yale Univ, $25 (240p) ISBN 978-0-300-20348-6
Lively, complex, and inclined to shock, Guggenheim (1898–1979), the modern art collector, emerges as the embodiment of the age in Prose’s (Lovers at the Chameleon Club) judicious biography. Leaning heavily on Guggenheim’s provocative memoir, Out of...
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Francine Prose. Harper, $26.99 (448p) ISBN 978-0-06-171378-1
Prose’s 21st novel (after The Turning) captures the brilliance of Paris’s bohemian art scene in the ’20s and ’30s, as well as the dark days that followed. Louisianne “Lou” Villars, a talented athlete, travels to Paris as a teenager, hoping to...
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Francine Prose. HarperTeen, $17.99 (256p) ISBN 978-0-06-199966-6
This alluring epistolary retelling of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw traces a contemporary babysitter’s supernatural encounters. The protagonist, Jack, is hoping to earn some money for college when he agrees to care for orphan siblings on...
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Francine Prose, Author Metropolitan Books $23 (256p) ISBN 978-0-8050-4861-2
The ego is a slippery thing. Suppress it and it sneaks in through the back door all the stronger. In the two deftly written novellas included in this volume, Prose (Hunters and Gatherers) creates funny, brilliantly authentic examples of this...
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Francine Prose, Author Farrar Straus Giroux $20 (247p) ISBN 978-0-374-17371-5
Prose (Bigfoot Dreams; Primitive People) has been steadily simplifying her work since the rather complex constructions of her earlier books, and her latest novel shows a striking advance in both economy and focus. Her protagonist, Martha, is a...
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Francine Prose, Author Farrar Straus Giroux $20 (231p) ISBN 978-0-374-23042-5
Prose ( Primitive People ; Household Saints ) is a highly talented writer who in this collection of stories--most of them previously published in little magazines--seems to be seeking a subject. They are mostly about young, fairly sophisticated...
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Francine Prose, Author Farrar Straus Giroux $20 (227p) ISBN 978-0-374-23722-6
Having acquired an audience of discerning readers with such novels as Household Saints and Bigfoot Dreams , Prose comes into her own with this acerbic comedy of manners. Both deliciously wicked and poignant, it is a fable of our times. Through the...
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Francine Prose, Author Pantheon Books $12.95 (213p) ISBN 978-0-394-52767-3
Like a chameleon, Prose seems able to switch subjects and styles with amazing versatility. Her past works include the tale of an actress possessed by a dybbuk (Hungry Hearts) and that of a journalist for a sleazy tabloid whose fabricated stories...
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Francine Prose, Author Penguin Books $69.5 (0p) ISBN 978-0-14-778136-9
Brooklynite Vera Perl, who thinks in absurd, alliterative headlines, is fired from her newspaper job and loses her daughter to her estanged husband, which allows her to pursue the eponymous Bigfoot. PW commented: ""This is a lollapalooza of a novel,
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Francine Prose, Author Pantheon Books $16.45 (280p) ISBN 978-0-394-54976-7
You can walk into Vera Perl's Brooklyn apartment house and pick her out of a clutch of tenants: you will recognize her charged, speculative voice. She writes for a yellow rag called This Week, thinks in absurd, alliterative headlines and tailors her
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Francine Prose, Author HarperCollins Publishers $25 (314p) ISBN 978-0-06-019541-0
Trust the iconoclastic Prose to turn conventional received wisdom on such subjects as predatory professors, innocent female students and the necessity for a degree of political correctness on campus on their silly heads. In this astutely observed,...
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Francine Prose, Author . HarperCollins $24.95 (432p) ISBN 978-0-06-019672-1
"I have never seen you without thinking that I should like to pray to you," says the poet Rilke. The object of his devotion is the astonishing Lou Andreas-Salomé—the woman who played muse not only to Rilke, but also to Nietzsche...
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Francine Prose, Author Ivy Books $4.99 (0p) ISBN 978-0-8041-1110-2
Through the eyes of protagonist Simone, an illegal immigrant from Haiti who becomes a ``caregiver'' to the children of unforgivably self-absorbed parents, Prose illuminates some of the ludicrous aspects of our culture. (May)
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Francine Prose, Author . HarperTeen $16.99 (262p) ISBN 978-0-06-137517-0
Prose offers a nuanced meditation on how stories of abuse can confuse and obscure the truth. When Maisie returns to her father and stepmother's home after a year living with her mother, she reunites with three childhood friends, Shakes, Chris...
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Francine Prose, Author . Harper $24.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-143079-4
In considering the iconic diary of Anne Frank, prolific novelist and critic Prose (Reading Like a Writer
), praises the young writer's fresh narrative voice, characterizations, sense of pacing and ear for dialogue. Prose calls her a literary...
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Francine Prose, Author . Harper $24.95 (275p) ISBN 978-0-06-621411-5
In Prose's deeply touching and absorbing 15th novel, narrator Nico, 13, comes upon Gerard Manley Hopkins's “Spring and Fall” (which opens “Margaret, are you grieving/ Over Goldengrove unleaving?”) in her father'
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Francine Prose, Author . HarperTeen $16.99 (260p) ISBN 978-0-06-057497-0
In a taut, brilliantly controlled novel, Prose (After
) dissects the unspoken dynamics that create bullies and their intended victims. Bart Rangely, the narrator, has begun eighth grade when his father dies in one of the Twin Towers on 9/11, and...
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Francine Prose, Author . HarperCollins $23.95 (273p) ISBN 978-0-06-077704-3
The trick to writing, Prose writes, is reading—carefully, deliberately and slowly. While this might seem like a no-brainer, Prose (Blue Angel
; A Changed Man
) masterfully meditates on how quality reading informs great writing, which will warm
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Francine Prose, Author . National Geographic Directions $20 (192p) ISBN 978-0-7922-6535-1
If asked to pick the "one quality that seems dependable, immutable, endlessly available" in Sicily, novelist and essayist Prose would choose intensity. It is difficult, she admits, to resist the superlative when describing such a place—
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Francine Prose, Author . HarperCollins/Atlas $19.95 (149p) ISBN 978-0-06-057560-1
The first thing to know about this life of the Italian baroque painter Caravaggio is that it is not a proper biography but rather an informal appreciation by novelist and occasional art critic Prose (Blue Angel
). As with the other volumes in the...
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Francine Prose, Author . HarperCollins $24.95 (432p) ISBN 978-0-06-019674-5
A starred review indicates a book of outstanding quality. A review with a blue-tinted title indicates a book of unusual commercial interest that hasn't received a starred review.
A CHANGED MAN
Francine Prose
. HarperCollins
, $24.95 (416p) ISBN
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Francine Prose, Author . HarperTempest $7.99 (330p) ISBN 978-0-06-008083-9
After a shooting takes place in a Massachusetts high school, a group of friends grow uneasy as the extra security precautions become more and more extreme. PW
's starred review called this "a chilling examination of controlling forces...
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Francine Prose, Author . Oxford Univ. $17.95 (108p) ISBN 978-0-19-515699-7
Originally a lecture in the New York Public Library's Seven Deadly Sins series, this erudite little meditation on appetite and religion matches ancient and medieval texts (Petronius, St. John Chrysostom) with up-to-date references to stomach...
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Francine Prose, Author, Nanette Savard, Read by , read by Nanette Savard. HarperAudio $34.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-06-125656-1
Savard has a pleasant voice, a good vocal range and the important ability to emphasize for clarity and drama. She's especially good at the long and very varied quotes Prose has selected to illustrate the elements of “close reading,”
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Francine Prose, Author, Mark Podwal, Illustrator Greenwillow Books $15 (24p) ISBN 978-0-688-14905-5
The foolishness of the people of Chelm, a favorite subject of Yiddish folktales, offers choice material for Prose and Podwal, previously paired for Dybbuk. Prose's loose story line first establishes the villagers' silliness, then relates how, after...
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Francine Prose, Author, Mark Podwal, Illustrator Greenwillow Books $16.95 (24p) ISBN 978-0-688-15806-4
Jewish tradition inspires this original tale about Schmuel the shoemaker, called Poor Stupid Schmuel by the townsfolk of Plotchnik because of his habit of forgetting to charge his customers. When a 40-day (and 40-night) drought threatens the town,...
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Francine Prose, Author, Mark Podwal, Illustrator Greenwillow Books $15.93 (0p) ISBN 978-0-688-14308-4
Prose has transformed the classic Jewish folktale of the dybbuk, a troublesome spirit that can inhabit and terrorize the human body, into a lively and entertaining children's story. Her light touch and deft wit weave together familiar strands of...
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Francine Prose, Author, Mark H. Podwal, Illustrator Greenwillow Books $15.95 (32p) ISBN 978-0-688-17565-8
Expert at refashioning Jewish folktales, Prose (previously paired with Podwal for The Angel's Mistake: Stories of Chelm) invents one just right for contemporary audiences. The story begins in Chelm, the legendary town of fools, where demons are just
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Francine Prose, Author, After Prose, Author . HarperCollins/Cotler, $15.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-008081-5
This novel set in the near future offers a chilling examination of controlling forces undermining individual rights. After a shooting takes place at Pleasant Valley, a Massachusetts high school, it seems reasonable that extra security precautions...
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Francine Prose, Author, Einav Aviram, Illustrator , illus. by Einav Aviram. HarperCollins/Cotler $15.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-06-008075-4
Mismatched art and text unfortunately obscure the theme of this confusing story about the difference between lying and storytelling. Every Sunday afternoon Leopold of Leipzig tells fantastical (and alliterative) stories at the zoo—about the...
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Francine Prose, Author, Matthew S. Armstrong, Illustrator , illus. by Matthew S. Armstrong. HarperCollins $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-06-008078-5
Think of that axiom about teaching a man to fish—switch rhinos for the guy and sweet potatoes for fish, and the result, unfortunately, breaks no new ground. The hero, a redheaded boy named Roy, not only saves his village of Sweet Potato from...
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Francine Prose. Harper, $23.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-06-239786-7
With characteristic elegance, literary critic and novelist Prose (Mister Monkey) passionately pushes great books and good writing in a wide-ranging assemblage of previously published and new essays. Her thesis is simple: “What I am writing about...
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Francine Prose. Harper, $26.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-301214-1
Prose (Mister Monkey) holds up a mirror to a fractured culture in this dazzling take on America's tendency to persecute, then lionize, its most subversive figures. In 1953, recent Harvard graduate Simon Putnam watches news of the Rosenberg execution
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Francine Prose. Yale Univ, $26 (208p) ISBN 978-0-300-25667-3
Plutarch, Shakespeare, and other male writers perpetuated the image of Cleopatra as an “Oriental outsider” who ruined Mark Antony and Julius Caesar’s marriages and betrayed her citizens, according to this stimulating feminist history. Contending...
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Francine Prose. Harper, $27.99 (272p) ISBN 978-0-06-331409-2
Bestselling novelist Prose (The Vixen) documents a single, pivotal year of her life in her visceral debut memoir. In 1972, Prose fled Cambridge, Mass., her failing marriage, and an in-progress graduate degree for San Francisco, where she lived off...
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ARTICLES
