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Huffington Post's 33 Titles To Add To Your Shelf in 2017Elle's 25 Most Anticipated Books by Women for 2017Buzzfeed's 32 Most Exciting Books Coming Out in 2017Los Angeles Times "Faces to Watch" in 2017Chicago Reader's Books We Can't Wait To Read In 2017An urgent, propulsive novel about a woman learning to negotiate her ailment and its various aftereffects via the simulacrum of a perfect romantic relationshipIn Catherine Lacey's ambitious second novel we are introduced to Mary, a young woman living in New York City and struggling to cope with a body that has betrayed her. All but paralyzed with pain, Mary seeks relief from a New Agey treatment called Pneuma Adaptive Kinesthesia, PAKing for short. And, remarkably, it works. But PAKing is prohibitively expensive and Mary is dead broke. So she scours Craigslist for fast-cash jobs and finds herself applying for the "Girlfriend Experiment," the brainchild of an eccentric actor, Kurt Sky, who is determined to find the perfect relationship -- even if that means paying different women to fulfill distinctive roles. Mary is hired as the "Emotional Girlfriend" -- certainly better than the "Anger Girlfriend" or the "Maternal Girlfriend" -- and is pulled into Kurt's ego-driven and messy attempt at human connection. Told in her signature spiraling prose, The Answers is full of the singular yet universal insights readers have come to expect from Lacey. It is a gorgeous hybrid of the plot- and the idea-driven novel that will leave you reeling.



About the Author

Catherine Lacey

Catherine Lacey is the author of three novels-- Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, and Pew. She has published fiction in The New Yorker, Harper's, Playboy, and in her collection Certain American States. The recipient of a Whiting Award and a Guggenheim fellowship, she was also named one of Granta Magazine's Best of Young American Novelists in 2017. Born in Mississippi, she is now based in Chicago.



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