Fame and Honour

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Description

Rhode Island, New England, the present day. A hurricane is on its way and the locals are either packing up and clearing out, or buying emergency provisions and preparing to batten down the hatches. Dorcas Mather, local librarian and spinster, is less concerned by the imminent threat than about a book that's come in with the most recent delivery. It's THE ABIGAIL MATHER STORY a true crime epic which supposedly tells the true story of Dorcas's sexually promiscuous sister Abigail, who s now serving a life sentence for killing her husband. As the storm rages on, Dorcas reads, rages at the inaccurate picture of her allegedly 'dysfunctional' family and the man who tore her sister's life apart, then tells us the real truth , although we sense she s hiding something, and knows more about the murder than she s letting on. Perhaps Abigail isn t the guilty one after all

Reviews

Tart observational powers... hugely funny - NYTimes.com

A brilliant black comedy...Poignant and funny, mean and tender, Willett's novel is exuberantly original - Publishers Weekly

Willett's prose is whip smart, at times howlingly funny - and just sad enough to keep the sisters' rivalries achingly real - Elle

Willett plays artfully with narrative structure... It's Dorcas's jaded take on every Yankee pretension, psycho-babble truism and literary delusion she encounters that makes this gothic tale so amusing - Seattle Times

Dorcas's deadpan narration is perfect... Willett's hapless characters are, in the end: grotesquely flawed, hugely funny, but human - Boston Herald

A sharp, highly original satire - Time Out New York

She writes for the joy of reading, not for the puffed-up pride of having written, and we're the ones who run off with the prize - New York Times Book Review

A hilarious black comedy...brilliantly contructed and unabashedly vicious... Nothing escapes (Willett's) notice, and Dorcas's keen view of the world is richer for that fact. And so are we - Miami Herald

Author Bio

Jincy Willett lives in California with her teenage son. She is the author of an acclaimed collection of short stories, JENNY AND THE JAWS OF LIFE. FAME AND HONOR is her first novel.