My New American Life: A Novel

(Paperback)

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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 familyand 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.

Reviews

"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

Author Bio

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.