In this delightful debut novel, a daughter of a quaint New England college town returns to confront her father's legacy and the surprising pieces of life he has left behind.
Maggie Pouncey has created an unforgettable character in the young, headstrong, and quick-witted Flora Dempsey, the only child of Lewis Dempsey, beloved former college president and a famous academic in the league of Harold Bloom. On hearing the news of her father's death, Flora hastily quits her big-city magazine job and returns to her hometown to inhabit his house. But even weightier is her appointment as her father's literary executor; it seems he was secretly writing poems at the end of his life - love poems, to a girlfriend Flora didn't even know he had. Suddenly besieged by well-wishers and literary bloggers alike, Flora has no choice but to figure out how to navigate it all: the fate of the poems, her relationship with the girlfriend who wants a place in her life, her memories of her parents' divorce, and her own uncertain future.
At once comic and profound, Perfect Reader is a heady, uplifting story of loneliness and of the spur to growth that grief can be. Brimming with life, and with the elbow-patchy wisdom and energy of her still-vivid father, Flora's story will set her free to be the 'perfect reader' not only of her father's life but of her own life as well.
Genre: Mystery
Maggie Pouncey has created an unforgettable character in the young, headstrong, and quick-witted Flora Dempsey, the only child of Lewis Dempsey, beloved former college president and a famous academic in the league of Harold Bloom. On hearing the news of her father's death, Flora hastily quits her big-city magazine job and returns to her hometown to inhabit his house. But even weightier is her appointment as her father's literary executor; it seems he was secretly writing poems at the end of his life - love poems, to a girlfriend Flora didn't even know he had. Suddenly besieged by well-wishers and literary bloggers alike, Flora has no choice but to figure out how to navigate it all: the fate of the poems, her relationship with the girlfriend who wants a place in her life, her memories of her parents' divorce, and her own uncertain future.
At once comic and profound, Perfect Reader is a heady, uplifting story of loneliness and of the spur to growth that grief can be. Brimming with life, and with the elbow-patchy wisdom and energy of her still-vivid father, Flora's story will set her free to be the 'perfect reader' not only of her father's life but of her own life as well.
Genre: Mystery
Visitors also looked at these books
Used availability for Maggie Pouncey's Perfect Reader