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PRETEND I'M DEAD
By: Jen Beagin
Scribner
January 2019
On Sale: January 8, 2019
256 pages
ISBN: 1501194429
EAN: 9781501194429
Kindle: B078M5C765
Trade Size / e-Book (reprint)
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Women's Fiction
Jen Beaginβs funny, moving, fearless debut novel introduces an unforgettable character, Monaβalmost twenty-four, emotionally adrift, and cleaning houses to get by. Handing out clean needles to drug addicts, she falls for a recipient she calls Mr. Disgusting, who proceeds to break her heart in unimaginable ways. Seeking a kind of healing, she decamps to Taos, New Mexico, for a fresh start, where she finds a community of seekers and cast-offs, all of whom have one or two things to teach herβthe pajama-wearing, blissed-out New Agers, the slightly creepy client with peculiar tastes in controlled substances, the psychic who might really be psychic. But always lurking just beneath the surface are her memories of growing up in a chaotic, destructive family from which sheβs trying to disentangle herself, and the larger legacy of the past she left behind. The story of Monaβs quest for self-acceptance in this working class American world is at once hilarious and wonderfully strange, true to life and boldly human, and introduces a stunning, one-of-a-kind new voice in American fiction.
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