About this item
John likes to arrive first. He enjoys standing quietly with a house before his clients arrive, and today, although he feels pinned beneath an invisible weight, he resolves to savor this solitary moment. It's one of those overhauled ranches so common to Old Cranbury these days, swollen and dressed to resemble a colonial. White, of course, with ornamental shutters and latches pretending to hold them open. A close echo of its renovated sisters on Whistle Hill Road, garnished with hostas and glitzed with azaleas. He has seen too many of these to count ... A man strikes an under-the-table deal with a surgeon to spend a few quiet seconds closer to his wife than he's ever been; a young soon-to-be mother looks on in paralyzing astonishment as her husband walks away from a twenty-year career in advertising at the urging of his spirit animal; an elderly artist risks more than he knows when he's commissioned by his newly-arrived neighbors to produce the work of a lifetime.In her stunning debut collection, The Wonder Garden, Lauren Acampora brings to the page with enchanting realism the myriad lives of a suburban town and lays them bare. These linked stories take a trenchant look at the flawed people of Old Cranbury, incisive tales that reveal at each turn the unseen battles we play out behind drawn blinds, the creeping truths from which we distract ourselves, and the massive dreams we haul quietly with us and hold close.Deliciously creepy and masterfully complex The Wonder Garden heralds the arrival of a phenomenal new talent in American fiction.
About the Author
Lauren Acampora is the author of THE PAPER WASP and THE WONDER GARDEN, both published by Grove Atlantic.THE PAPER WASP, her first novel, was published in June 2019 and has been named one of the best books of the summer by The New York Times Book Review, USA Today, Oprah Magazine, ELLE, Town & Country, BBC.com, Tatler, Daily Mail (UK) , Thrillist, Boston.com, and Publishers Weekly.Her debut collection of linked stories, THE WONDER GARDEN, was published in 2015. It was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and an Indie Next selection and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by Amazon and NPR. It also won the GLCA New Writers Award and was a finalist for the New England Book Award.Lauren's short fiction and other writing has also appeared in publications such as The Paris Review, Guernica, Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Antioch Review, The New York Times Book Review, and LitHub. She is a graduate of Brown University, earned an MFA from Brooklyn College, and has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, Writers OMI International Residency, and the Ragdale Foundation.Lauren lives in Westchester County, New York, with her husband, artist Thomas Doyle, and their daughter.
