Stephen Prosapio said...Just a "kwik" hello and best of luck. Sorry but out here on the left coast 7 AM comes mighty early on a Saturday. I've got the book and it looks like a great read! Best of luck with it!!!Dave F. said...I'm here. I think. Did anyone else see the video interview with Nancy Mauro? It's up on youtube under her name.
Evil Editor said...I thought this was one of our better books, but feel free to disagree. It combined the quality of good literary fiction with some hilarious situations.
fairyhedgehog said...I thought it was well-written with some clever and unusual ideas but I didn't enjoy it.
Dave F. said...I started out wondering and then found the cat lady librarians. Even their names were kittenish and gossipy.
stacy said...I did love the whole Persian and Ginger thing. I loved it up until Lily ran away from Lloyd's violent molestation of Audiophile. Then my love turned to hate.
fairyhedgehog said...Has everyone finished the book? I don't have to worry about spoilers?
stacy said...Too late, Fairy. I just spilled the beans. Seems I can derail a chat even when I've read the book. I didn't hate the book, mind you, but that was the moment I started to hate Lily.
Dave F. said...Lloyd was creepy. But consider that the movie Jackass 3d opened with a slam-bang weekend box office and it's basically guys superglueing themselves together naked and trying not to kill each other with high explosives and runaway recreational vehicles. That's the Lloyd creeping into all of us.
Evil Editor said...I had a feeling the pervert/Lily relationship would bother a lot of readers.
fairyhedgehog said...At first, the perv reminded me of the Royal Porcupine in Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood but then I found the whole ripping-the-panties-off episode felt like a step too far for me.
stacy said...It's not even her friendship with Lloyd that bothered me. It's that she knew what he was and she still ran away when he did exactly what he said he would. I just . . . I felt like it was some literary crap about cowardly behavior. Like, if we're honest with ourselves, we might do the same thing. I found that utterly un-insightful, because NOT all of us would run. ESPECIALLY if we knew Lloyd and were exposed to his behavior prior to that. Just how disturbing does a person's behavior have to be before Lily would step up?
Evil Editor said...One can hope she wouldn't have run away if Audiophile hadn't left Lloyd lying on the floor in excruciating pain.
stacy said...Yeah, one would hope. The thing is, I was totally with her up until that point. There were parts that made me laugh out loud, and my limited exposure to the ad industry made me feel like I "got" those parts.
Dave F. said...to be serious, Lloyd is like "perversion light." He peeps and better for Lily, he peeps on dirty clothes and shapeless old women. UNTIL, he soft talks a girl into taking off her panties. Now that's hard core perversion. It can be rationalized as altogether different than merely sneaking peepers from roofs. We've gone from the morally ambiguous that we can laugh at to the morally repugnant that isn't funny (to our minds). There are examples of sniffing being played for great laughs without that repugnance.
fairyhedgehog said...I agree with Dave that until the pantie incident the voyeurism seems relatively harmless as these things go. Then it really does escalate.
Robin S. said...I'm on the fence - there's a lot to like - many good sections, many excellent passages, well-constructed. But I didn't engage in the way I do when I'm down into the fictive dream, and living it along with the characters. Maybe that was the point, though?
fairyhedgehog said...I was struggling because I found the characters unlikeable but after Duncan killed the dog I was just reading to get to the end.
Dave F. said...People are unlikeable. Some dogs are unlikeable. It's just the way the world is.
fairyhedgehog said...This is true, Dave, but I just can't enjoy reading about killing a dog simply because it's unlikeable and an inconvenience.
Evil Editor said...Apparently FH can't forgive the killing of the dog, but it did allow the finding of the collar, which was the clincher as far as the guilt was concerned. Plus they were gonna find the backyard dig if the dog wasn't eliminated. Plus, it's a fictional dog.
stacy said...Hah. Good point, EE. It's a fictional molestation, too.
Nancy said...Hi, I'm Nancy, the author of New World Monkeys. Sorry I'm late--just put my parents in a cab for the airport. Glad to join you today.
stacy said...Strong feelings about Lily here, Nancy.
Evil Editor said...Welcome Nancy. Okay, no more critical comments.
Nancy said...No, go ahead, criticize away...Lily does tend to..uh, polarize the audience. Duncan and Lily have a negative character arc--I wanted to write about people doing the wrong thing. And what might come of it. Definitely not a redemptive Oprah pick.
Evil Editor said...Did Lily run from the library because Lloyd knew she killed the boar and because Lloyd knew she'd been peeping?
Nancy said...I think Lily fled the library because she felt herself complicit--it's the point in the story where she realizes she's been following her head versus her gut. Realizes what damage this might have done to her marriage. But that realization, I think, had to play out between her and her husband. Not her and Lloyd. That's why she scrams.
Evil Editor said...Recalling that Lily wanted to intervene when she saw the dentist possibly dying, and was prevented from doing so by Lloyd, I wonder if her failure to intervene when she saw Lloyd molesting Audiophile was partly related.
stacy said...In retrospect, now that I've had a little time to think about it, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by Lily's response to the molestation, given that she didn't call the police when she witnessed the dentist passing out from the gas.
Dave F. said...It is a parable of a society gone wrong and so conflicting and subverting the sacred bonds of marriage that a couple completely miss the love signals each sends to the other. It's a darling I love you but I must beat you into the ground to prove it. Honey, you've let your hairyness bloom and I no longer want my manly legs against your hairy, manly legs but I haven't stopped loving you. If the damn dog wouldn't dig up the body of my dead ancestor and munch on the bones, we might have peace in the world...that sort of illogic. About a third of the way through the book I thought "what the hell is going on here" and then I abandoned myself to the snarky humor. Then it turned into a romance and my feminine side took over and "Love Story" bloomed throughout the rest of the book. (seriously, I giggled a lot over their awkward attempts at getting back together).
stacy said...Dave, that was actually the part I loved about the book, and one of the things that kept me reading. I felt like Nancy really nailed that aspect of love between two people. Like they're still in love but for some reason they keep missing each other's signals. And the thing is, I'm not much into books about relationships. But this one really pulled me in. I loved the honesty about the mustache and the pimples on the ass and all of that, because that's what people get when they're in relationships. It's not all flowers and sunshine. And it was funny. Duncan was funny.
Dave F. said...They were always in love with each other. It's just sometimes love needs a boost from a feral pig. Now that sounds odd but how many times to you see old, bickering couples who just won't budge off their rock-hard positions of opposition to each other one minute and then next are humping in bed like minks? (well not quite that vivid example)...I could see some of my friends' marriages in this. Like when I see fights that don't make sense. But they fight.
stacy said...Um, I don't often see that, Dave. I just find it hard to get my head around the notion that she wouldn't at least try to get a sucker punch in on Lloyd. I guess maybe that's actually a cool part of the book. This is something this character would do that I don't think I would do. But hopefully I'll never know.
Evil Editor said...How they misinterpreted everything was the saddest part, and in a way the funniest. Or maybe the funniest part was the hilarious ad campaign. I kept waiting for someone to object to the whole idea. I realize we're farther from Vietnam than we were from WWII when Hogan's Heroes and Catch-22 etc. came out, but...
stacy said...Yeah, the ad thing was pretty hilarious. Actually, all the ad people were pretty hilarious.
Nancy said...The ad part was fun to write. It's actually not too far off the mark. Well, the discussions that go on in the agency are pretty realistic. In reality we'd never get a campaign like that out the door.
Dave F. said...The Vietnam Ad campaign made me squirm. And the ad men coworkers were (to say the minimum) distasteful.
stacy said...They were. So was Anne. But in a hilarious way.
Nancy said...This book actually started off as a short story. It was only from Duncan's POV. He was a copywriter who quit the agency world to write a novel about Vietnam. Took the house upstate with his wife for the summer to both sort out their issues and write the 'novel'. Later, when I blew it out to a novel someone suggested that I put Duncan back in the ad world because no one would want to read a novel about someone writing a novel. But I didn't want to lose the Vietnam part completely.
stacy said...I think the Vietnam part worked really well. How long did you work as an art director and copywriter, Nancy, if you don't mind my asking?
Nancy said...Stacy, I have been in and out of advertising for 14 years. I'm writing full time now, but I go back to freelance now and then. It's nice to be around people after working at home for years at a time.
stacy said...Yes, working from home all the time can get lonely.
Dave F. said...Well, at least I didn't call ad people - creepy, soul-sucking loons with no morals and the social consciousness of ferrets. I did work in PR for a couple years and as an engineer, it was the most revolting job I could do. I wanted my numbers, my glassware, my analyses back. I am bad on camera answering questions and I am too scientific to write an ad campaign like "stand up and deliver."
fairyhedgehog said...It's interesting to hear how the novel started out. About the dog: in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time the death of a dog is the precipitating incident for the whole story and somehow I was able to cope with that. I didn't quite follow Duncan's motivation for killing it.
Evil Editor said...I think he killed it partly for the same reason he sped away when his car damage was spotted (panic at the prospect of being exposed), but also because he didn't kill the boar.
Nancy said...Fairyhedgehog, I think Duncan needed to kill that dog since he flubbed with the wild boar. Kind of like his second shot at manhood.
Dave F. said...Oog, the great hunter, returning from the kill with the beast, the fearsome poodle. That's going to have me giggling all day.
fairyhedgehog said...That makes sense. He was so cross that she "didn't give him the chance to do it" but it was clear that however long she'd waited wouldn't have been long enough.
Evil Editor said...Honey, I know you'll never forgive me for not killing the boar, but hey, I killed a poodle! That's something, isn't it?
Sylvia said...I did laugh ruefully as I realised that was his intent.
Dave F. said...Remember Gary Larson of THE FAR SIDE's take on hunter/gatherers ... Vegetarian cavemen carrying a giant carrot back to the cave on their shoulders...I am man! I kill!
Robin S. said...I've known many a couple with a stronger wife than husband - mentally, most especially.
stacy said...I have, too. But I think in the end Duncan had a different kind of strength, something that survived her little jabs.
Dave F.said...What nationality was Lily? I can't get that straight in my head. I thought she was Vietnamese but then I thought that was so wrong.
Nancy said...Dave, I saw Lily as having some sort of Germanic heritage. Rather stern!
Dave F. said...I saw Lily as Lucy Liu. That made the Vietnam sequences even creepier. I definitely found a Christmas gift in the book.
Robin S. said...I've been looking through my copy for passages I marked...pg 205 of the paperback - " The three men give her a long, unfriendly look, as if assessing the price she'd fetch in John Deere replacement parts." That made me smile. Enjoyed this line on page 286 - "Because when you unearth your own private civilization...you've got to do all the work yourself."
Evil Editor said...I think I have a pretty good vocabulary, but it felt like every other page I was encountering a word I wasn't familiar with. Did you get 100% on you vocabulary SATs, Nancy?
Nancy said...EE, I'm Canadian so no SATs for me!
Dave F. said...I watched your bookstore interview and were the couple you spoke of real friends or were they a composite? The discussion of the guy turning hairy and feral might create some friction between friends.
Nancy said...Dave, they were a composite. I hate showing up to readings and just reading.
Evil Editor said...Did anyone else think, when a chapter ended with a cannon firing and the phone going dead, that Skinner had fired the cannon into their house? I went through the next few chapters wondering why no characters were mentioning this, before I finally went back and confirmed that it hadn't necessarily happened.
fairyhedgehog said...It was certainly very vivid and there are images that will stick with me. I wasn't clear why Duncan didn't get the car seen to. Every time he drove back to the country there was the risk of discovery. It did ratchet up the tension!
stacy said...It was vivid. I think that's why I reacted so strongly to Lily bolting.
Sylvia said...Having been in a marriage that failed slowly, I found the relationship interactions incredibly realistic - in fact uncomfortably so.
stacy said...I did too, Sylvia. That's one of the things that I loved about the book.
fairyhedgehog said...I really didn't expect them to get back together at the end.
Nancy said...It's funny because I've had some people (especially those who've been divorced) comment that the book was an eerie mirror on the last days of their marriage. Others have said "why aren't they nicer to each other?" The answer, of course, because then there would be no book...
stacy said...The book definitely went in a direction I didn't expect, which is always a good surprise, even if it doesn't feel that way at first. I expected the boar to be the thing that held them together, and in a way, that turned out to be the case. But not the way I expected. It seemed to be the glue that held them together whether they liked it or not. They both had to stay quiet if they wanted any chance of . . . getting away with it, for lack of a better term.
Sylvia said...The constant undertones and subtext, real and imagined, is what really rang true for me. There were times when I hoped someone would slap them. Even if it was Skinner! ;)
Dave F. said...I've seen couples position themselves into hating each other. One couple in particular, one side just took the bickeringly childish opposition to the other. It was up is down and white is black type thing. After a few weeks, it was all out war and the offenses kept building and achieved monumental proportions.
Robin S. said...Actually, my divorce took place almost precisely because I was stronger than my husband, He was much taller, much 'bigger' physically, but I was stronger. Always was. It bored me after a while.
Evil Editor said...No man is man enough for you, Robin.
stacy said...The relationship stuff closely mirrored some of my own. As Sylvia said, sometimes uncomfortably so. Really made me feel for them as a couple. I was hoping they'd be able to work things out.
Evil Editor said...All the theories on how the nanny met her death were plausible. You should write a police procedural or mystery, Nancy.
stacy said...EE, that was another thing in the book that kind of surprised me - that they never solved her death. I expected they would. I kind of liked that they didn't.
Nancy said...I'm working on a second novel now that somehow has developed a whodunnit element. Although it's about a donut.
Robin S. said...It seems a natural progression for you, Nancy. I enjoy well-done literary suspense/thrillers/whodunits/what-have-you - Dennis Lehane comes to mind.
Dave F. said...After watching BRAVO's reality show on pastry chefs, I can believe there could be a murder in a donut shop. Some of those contestants aren't wrapped too tight.
stacy said...What's the title of the second book, Nancy?
Nancy said...I think the next book will be called Shelf Life. We'll see how it rolls out.
Evil Editor said...I guess we should wrap things up. Most generous of you to give up your time for us Nancy. Let us know when your next book comes out; I'm sure you've made some fans.
Nancy said...Thank you guys so much for reading and reacting and inviting me to join today!
