The Poser: A Novel

(Paperback)

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Description

All his life, Giovanni Bernini has possessed an uncanny gift: he can imitate anyone he meets. Honed by his mother at a young age, the talent catapults him from small-town obscurity to stardom. As his fame grows, Giovanni encounters a beautiful and enigmatic stage singer, Lucy Starlight - the only person whose thread he cannot find - and becomes increasingly trapped inside his many poses. Ultimately, he must assume the one identity he has never been able to master: his own.

Reviews

Praise for Jacob Rubin and The Poser

If a novel can be measured by its imaginative precision, the shrewdness of its characterization, and the authority of its prose, then The Poser, Jacob Rubins smart and absorbing debut, claims its power early and rarely surrenders it. . . . I hear echoes of Steven Millhauser and Tom McCarthy. . . . But the sensibility with which [Rubin] shapes his story is highly individual: probing, witty, yet hiding at its center a strangely iron compassion.
Kevin Brockmeier, The New York Times Book Review

Zelig with a dash of Being There.
New York Magazine, Approval Matrix (highbrow/brilliant)

A masterful debut . . . [a] meditation on the nature of identity delivered with vaudeville verve. . . . The Poser, as it follows Giovanni from triumph to perilous triumph, seduces you with its fanciful prose, its larger-than-life characters and its fun-house-mirror take on a land of opportunity where appearance often trumps reality. Its also one heck of a way for Rubin to announce his own presence on the literary stage.
The Washington Post

Precise and inventive writing. . . . The Poser is an exciting debut and I recommend it for its noirish beats. It is also richly, darkly funny. The novel is set in a fictional country that resembles America in the 1940s and '50s, and Rubin has exquisitely created this world; it is easy to get lost in it. . . . At its heart [The Poser] offers a deeply sensitive exploration into matters of identity and authenticity.
Associated Press

Rubin writes with unbridled inventiveness, a vaudeville show on paper. . . . Theres a hint of Woody Allens film Zelig here, and a picaresque quality that finally tips over into darkly comic horror. . . Rubin, whos worked as a stand-up comedian, knows about performance, and the ways it can both trap and liberate. . . . The novels last pages . . . open out into a surprisingly tender ending.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer

To map Rubins lineage, one would have to draw improbable links between the rueful comedy of Sam Lipsyte, the strange, tender inventions of John Crowley, and the off-historical tales of Steven Millhauser. . . . Rubin isnt afraid of majestic, trippy metaphors la Denis Johnson.
Alexander Benaim, Bookforum.com

Startlingly fresh. . . . Rubin's uniquely hyper-energized and metaphorical prose . . . seems to fizzle and shriek itself off the page.
Forth Magazine

Witty, inventive . . . immensely entertaining . . . well-sculpted.
Publishers Weekly

Zany.
Booklist

The Poseris smart and grand and funny, a wonderful fable. Mr. Rubin is a great hope for comic fiction in the 21st century. Hes got the spirit and the ear.
Sam Lipsyte,New York Timesbestselling author ofThe Ask

I yawpedbecause when you read a book as exquisite as The Poser, you yawp. Have you ever met a character like Giovanni Bernini My heart breaks even now. With astonishing control, Mr. Rubin has created the perfect comic noir tragedy of mimicry and betrayal, of great love and greater loss. Bernini is one of fictions great ciphers and his parallel universe is such a good imitation of our universe I can no longer distinguish which is which. This is a novel that will be loved and admired for years to come.
Reif Larsen,New York Timesbestselling author ofThe Selected Works of T.S. SpivetandI Am Radar

Jacob Rubin writes with more vitality, drive, and vision than any young writer Ive seen in ten years.
Barry Hannah

With twists and snap and more than its share of vaudevillian flair,The Poseris often-dazzling, a high-wire entertainment about entertainment. Jacob Rubin is a first-rate comic writer, and somehow, dont ask me how, he's crafted a hummingly smooth, aching look at why we perform, loneliness, and the nature of self.
Charles Bock,New York Timesbestselling author ofBeautiful Children

The Poserseduces with its imaginative energy, the sheer wit and reach of its invention, but is propelled at its core by a deeply human generosity to its characterstheir fierce and confused and fragile hearts.
Leslie Jamison,New York Timesbestselling author ofThe Empathy Exams

Jacob Rubin has, to borrow a term from his wondrous debut novel about the worlds greatest impressionist, deftly unraveled the thread of his protagonist and impersonated a writer twenty years his senior.The Poseris a rollicking picaresque that is also a surprisingly affecting meditation on authenticity and loneliness.
Teddy Wayne, author ofThe Love Song of Jonny Valentine

The liveliest prose and most ebullient voice in fiction Ive read in some time. Full of rich, odd, humorously soulful, and tortured souls who yearn for well, they dont often know, even if they think they do, but they want it. Its a romp, this novel, as if Dickens spawned Stanley Elkin and the Pynchon ofThe Crying of Lot 49, yet the voice is Rubins own. Masterful prose, full of kinetic energy.
Brad Watson, author of the National Book Award finalistThe Heaven of Mercuryand PEN/Faulkner Award finalistAliens in the Prime of Their Lives

Jacob RubinsThe Poseris a tour de force of voice, a genius act of ventriloquism, a terrific novel. From the opening youll be hooked, as I was, and youll love it all the way through.
Tom Franklin,New York Timesbestselling author ofCrooked Letter, Crooked Letter

Author Bio

JACOB RUBINs writing has appeared in the anthology Best New American Voices, The New Yorker online, New York magazine, Slate, n+1, and The New Republic. He also writes for television and film.He lives in New York.