Perfect Reader : A Novel

From Publishers Weekly This imaginative debut takes a profound look at the connection between words on the page and the infinite interpretations for a reader. For heroine Flora Dempsey, the father-daughter bond is a further complication. Flora moves back to her picturesque New England hometown after the death of her father, former president of the town's local college, where she discovers that her inheritance includes the role of literary executor. Lewis Dempsey, an academic writer, has left behind a manuscript of erotic poems written to Cynthia, his lover, whose existence is a surprise to Flora. Cynthia, meanwhile, attempts to become part of Flora's life, wanting friendship—and publication of the poems. Overwhelmed, Flora navigates her father's poetry, retreats into her memories of childhood and her parents' divorce, and poignantly contemplates the acts of reading and writing. Pouncey has skillfully created a portrait of smalltown academia, where the relationships between reader and text are just as elusive and complex as the relationships between father and daughter, husband and wife, or between two lovers. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Flora, a twentysomething magazine editor, enjoys her visits with her long-divorced, revered literary critic, former college president father, but she has never bothered to read the book that made him famous, Reader as Understander, or the new, unpublished poems he’s entrusted her with. When he dies unexpectedly, Flora is stunned to find herself designated as his literary executor. In a miasma of regret and grief, she quits her job and returns to her stifling New England hometown, Darwin, much to her irascible mother’s dismay. There Flora discovers that her father’s poems were inspired by his love for an art historian fond of flowers and bright colors who is anxious to see the lyrics in print. Flora––testy, rude, “wolfish,” and terribly lonely—enrages everyone as she struggles to understand all that she’s lost and found. Although poorly paced, Pouncey’s first novel is nonetheless sparkling, shrewd, and at times hilarious in its parsing of family dynamics, academic competition, the solace of literature, the aggression of the blogosphere, and what it truly means to be a “perfect reader” and a generous soul. --Donna Seaman In this enchanting debut novel, Maggie Pouncey brings to life the unforgettable Flora Dempsey, the headstrong and quick-witted only child of Lewis Dempsey, a beloved former college president and famous literary critic in the league of Harold Bloom. At the news of her father’s death, Flora quits her big-city magazine job and returns to Darwin, the quaint New England town where she grew up, to retreat into the house he has left her, filled as it is with reminders of him. 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 know he had. Flora soon discovers that this woman has her own claims on Lewis’s poetry and his memory, and in the righteousness of her loss and bafflement at her father’s secrets—his life so richly separate from her own in ways she never guessed—Flora is highly suspicious of her. Meanwhile, Flora is besieged by well-wishers and literary bloggers alike as she tries to figure out how to navigate it all: the fate of the poems, 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 energy and with the elbow-patchy wisdom of her still-vivid father, Flora’s story will set her free to be the “perfect reader” not just of her father’s life but of her own as well. Flora Dempsey is the headstrong only child of Lewis Dempsey, a college professor and world famous critic. When Lewis passes away, Flora returns to her New England hometown to act as his literary executor. There, she finds herself responsible for a manuscript that he was secretly writing at the end of his lifelove poems to a girlfriend Flora didn't know he had. As Flora is besieged by well-wishers and literary vultures alike, she tries to figure out how to navigate it all: the fate of the poems, the girlfriend who wants a place in her life, the wounds left by her parents divorce, and her uncertain future. Brimming with energy, humor, and the elbow-patchy wisdom of Floras still-vivid father, this enchanting debut is the uplifting story of a young woman striving to become the perfect reader of her fathers life, as well as her own.