2011 book 97

Francine Prose's My New American Life
Prose is one of those authors who always writes excellent books, and always writes very different kinds of books (a talent many authors don't have). For instance, her previous three books were an examination of Anne Frank's life as a writer, a novel about a girl whose older sister dies, and a novel about a white supremacist who gets a job at a human rights organization run by an Elie Wiesel type. Very disparate characters and themes--though I suppose there's a sense of otherness in a lot of her work, she really creates a whole new world each time.

Anyway, her latest is about a young Albanian woman who's working as a nanny for a teenage boy, half-pretending to be a writer, and getting involved with some possibly shady Albanian men. But really it's about starting over, about different kinds of relationships and friendships, and about storytelling. There was a bit of a deus ex machina that could have been more neatly integrated into the story, but still: excellent stuff. A.


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A review copy was provided by the publisher.