If you loved The Jane Austen Book Club, you’ll revel in
Wit’s End, a sly and clever novel of mystery, intrigue, and
virtual reality.
Wit’s End is many things: a quest novel—a young woman’s
search for the truth about her dead father’s past; a
mystery—the story of a long-ago murder in which that father
might have been complicit; and a game—one that ensnares
readers in cunning deceptions, challenging them to separate
the true from the fictive.
Set in contemporary Santa Cruz, the novel centers on Rima
Lanisell, a young woman at loose ends, having just lost her
father to cancer. (Rima seems to lose people and things
habitually— sunglasses and car keys, lovers and family
members.) Now she has come to coastal California at the
behest of her godmother, Addison Early, who once knew
Rima’s father well. Perhaps too well. Rima is on a mission
to discover just what that relationship was really about.
Addison, a bestselling mystery writer, is secretive and
feisty. Over the years, she has tried to protect her work
and her privacy as her passionate fans have become ever
more intrusive. In this age of the Internet, with its
blogs, chat rooms, websites, its Wikipedia, false personas,
and hidden identities, those fans have begun to take over
the plot lines and the life of her famous fictional
detective. For many, he is more real than Addison herself.
So Wit’s End is also a highly inventive take on the way
dedicated readers appropriate their favorite books, perhaps
the one act of theft applauded the world over—except by
authors.
Above all, Wit’s End is Karen Joy Fowler at her most
subversive and witty, creating characters both oddball and
endearing in a voice that is uniquely and memorably her own.
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