My New American Life: A Novel

Description

Lula, a twenty-six-year-old Albanian woman living surreptitiously in New York City on an expiring tourist visa, hopes to make a better life for herself in America. When she lands a job caring for a rebellious high schooler in wealthy, suburban New Jersey, it seems that the American dream may finally be within reach. But things take a sinister turn when Lula's Albanian "brothers" show up in a black SUV to remind her that all Albanians are family-and that Lula's family has a very serious favor to ask. Set in the aftermath of 9/11, My New American Life offers a biting and darkly humorous portrait of an era when dreams and ideals began to give way to cynicism, fear, and still-resonating questions about what it means to be an American.

Francine Prose is the author of twenty-one works of fiction including, most recently, the highly acclaimed novel, MISTER MONKEY, and the New York Times bestselling novel, LOVERS AT THE CHAMELEON CLUB, PARIS 1932. Her novel A CHANGED MAN won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and BLUE ANGEL was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised ANNE FRANK: THE BOOK, THE LIFE, THE AFTERLIFE, and the New York Times bestseller READING LIKE A WRITER, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director's Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She lives in New York City.

"An illuminating and ultimately upbeat look at America's immigrant situation that all fiction readers will enjoy." -- Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal "Prose is dazzling in her sixteenth book of spiky fiction, a fast-flowing, bittersweet, brilliantly satirical immigrant story that subtly embodies the cultural complexity and political horrors of the Balkans and Bush-Cheney America." -- Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review) "Utterly charming. Savvy about the shady practices of both US immigration authorities and immigrants themselves... Entertaining, light yet not trivial, a joy to read." -- Lionel Shriver "Prose's characters in MY NEW AMERICAN LIFE are complex and brilliantly drawn (culturally distinct but without the usual cliches)." -- Simon Van Booy, Bomb Magazine "Nothing is beyond the artistic reach of Francine Prose" -- Shelf Awareness "A tangy mixture of satire and sentiment... Ms. Prose uses her heroine's outside status to make a lot of funny ... observations about the cosseted life of well-to-do Americans." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times "Prose ... is, as always, sharply intelligent." -- NPR.org "Prose succeeds by transforming anxiety into compassion-it's a little lever that gets tripped when we truly imagine what another person feels." -- Los Angeles Times "There has been a lot written about the Bush and Cheney days, but rarely from such an amusing perspective ... at once honest, complicated, sexy, funny and-ultimately-uplifting." -- BookPage "A superb novel ... a wickedly entertaining read... Prose is on top of her game ... the fluidity of the prose surpassing, I think, her work in Blue Angel." -- The Millions "Prose spins the many straws of American culture into a golden tale, shimmering with hilarious, if blistering, satire." -- Helen Simonson, Washington Post "My New American Life is-happily-vintage Prose: cheerfully pessimistic, smart, funny, with characters unnervingly spot-on in their stages of outrage, denial, malaise or disillusionment." -- Miami Herald "A fast-moving novel ... [that] brings together cultural satire, mystery, a psychosexual thriller, and political outrage... Exceptionally entertaining, fun to read in its sentences, incidents, scenes." -- Michael Dirda, New York Review of Books "She's a perfect observer of American life in the opening decade of the 21st century... Wry ... witty ... a book that brims with smart surprises." -- Ron Carlson, New York Times Book Review "Prose is in her sweet spot as a nimble chronicler of contemporary culture." -- Entertainment Weekly "In My New American Life, Francine Prose cracks open that old chestnut about the immigrant reinvention experience and injects, yes, new life into it." -- USA Today "Fun and funny,...a satire of immigration and its discontents..." -- San Francisco Chronicle "Prose's real aim is to characterize and caricature modern American life, mostly in a gentle way that will leave readers smarter than they were before..." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch