Named a Best Book of the Summer by The New York Times, O Magazine, Elle, Town & Country, Tatler, and Publishers Weekly and one of "5 books not to miss" by USA Today
In small-town Michigan, Abby Graven leads a solitary life. Once a bright student on the cusp of a promising art career, she now languishes in her childhood home, trudging to and from her job as a supermarket cashier. Each day she is taunted from the magazine racks by the success of her former best friend Elise, a rising Hollywood starlet whose life in pictures Abby obsessively scrapbooks. At night, Abby escapes through the films of her favorite director, Auguste Perren, a cult figure known for his creative institute the Rhizome. Inspired by Perren, Abby draws fantastical storyboards based on her often premonitory dreams, a visionary gift she keeps hidden.
When Abby encounters Elise again at their high school reunion, she's surprised and warmed that Elise still considers her not only a friend but a brilliant storyteller and true artist. Elise's unexpected faith in Abby reignites in her a dormant hunger, and when Elise offhandedly tells Abby to look her up if she's ever in LA, Abby soon arrives on her doorstep. There, Abby discovers that while Elise is flourishing professionally, she is lonely and disillusioned behind her glossy magazine veneer. Ever the supportive friend, Abby becomes enmeshed in Elise's world, even as she guards her own dark secret and burning desire for greatness. As she edges closer to Elise, the Rhizome, and her own artistic ambitions, the dynamic shifts between the two friends—until Abby can see only one way to grasp the future that awaits her.
An electrifying novel by the author of The Wonder Garden, The Paper Wasp is a knife-edge story of dark friendship and twisted ambition against the backdrop of contemporary Hollywood.
"[A] page turner . . . a stunning portrait of a fixated woman and an addictive, modern commentary on an eternal theme of obsession . . . Lauren Acampora gives us a soul trip/head trip/rarefied LA trip replete with surrealism and social commentary." —Caroline Kepnes, author of You
Named a Best Book of the Summer by The New York Times, O Magazine, Elle, Town & Country, Tatler, and Publishers Weekly and one of "5 books not to miss" by USA Today
In small-town Michigan, Abby Graven leads a solitary life. Once a bright student on the cusp of a promising art career, she now languishes in her childhood home, trudging to and from her job as a supermarket cashier. Each day she is taunted from the magazine racks by the success of her former best friend Elise, a rising Hollywood starlet whose life in pictures Abby obsessively scrapbooks. At night, Abby escapes through the films of her favorite director, Auguste Perren, a cult figure known for his creative institute the Rhizome. Inspired by Perren, Abby draws fantastical storyboards based on her often premonitory dreams, a visionary gift she keeps hidden.
When Abby encounters Elise again at their high school reunion, she's surprised and warmed that Elise still considers her not only a friend but a brilliant storyteller and true artist. Elise's unexpected faith in Abby reignites in her a dormant hunger, and when Elise offhandedly tells Abby to look her up if she's ever in LA, Abby soon arrives on her doorstep. There, Abby discovers that while Elise is flourishing professionally, she is lonely and disillusioned behind her glossy magazine veneer. Ever the supportive friend, Abby becomes enmeshed in Elise's world, even as she guards her own dark secret and burning desire for greatness. As she edges closer to Elise, the Rhizome, and her own artistic ambitions, the dynamic shifts between the two friends—until Abby can see only one way to grasp the future that awaits her.
An electrifying novel by the author of The Wonder Garden, The Paper Wasp is a knife-edge story of dark friendship and twisted ambition against the backdrop of contemporary Hollywood.
"[A] page turner . . . a stunning portrait of a fixated woman and an addictive, modern commentary on an eternal theme of obsession . . . Lauren Acampora gives us a soul trip/head trip/rarefied LA trip replete with surrealism and social commentary." —Caroline Kepnes, author of You
Reviews-
-
April 15, 2019
Acampora’s debut novel (following collection The Wonder Garden) is an unsettling and surreal excavation of the boundless depths of the human psyche. Abby Graven, once valedictorian of her high school class, is a 28-year-old college dropout, living at her parents’ home in Michigan and plagued by hyperrealistic and fantastical dreams in the vein of the dark movies she loves. When she decides to go to her 10-year high school reunion, it is with the hopes of seeing her former best friend Elise Van Dijk, now a rising actress in Hollywood, whose ascent Abby has been compulsively documenting. Elise is effervescent when she sees Abby again, making a throwaway comment that Abby should call her if Abby’s ever in L.A. Months later, Abby takes Elise up on that offer. Though clearly thrown, Elise welcomes Abby into her home and soon offers her a job as her personal assistant. But the more intimately Abby becomes intertwined with Elise’s life, the more she realizes how insecure and unstable her friend truly is. Meanwhile, Abby’s dreams grow more and more bizarre, making it difficult for her to distinguish them from reality, with eventually catastrophic results. Acampora’s writing is gorgeous and renders with precision and clarity the spiral of Abby’s increasingly disorienting world of obsession and hallucinatory imagery. The result is a piercing, disquieting novel. Agent: Bill Clegg, the Clegg Agency. -
Starred review from April 1, 2019
In this thrilling debut novel, a young woman with big but unfocused ambitions moves to Los Angeles to become the personal assistant to her childhood best friend, a rising Hollywood starlet. Brilliant Abby never really made it out of her childhood bedroom in Michigan. Her vivid dream life and teenage obsession with the surrealist filmmaker Auguste Perren have pinned her in one place while she grows ever more detached and depressed. "The walls around my dream life leaked," Abby admits, early in the novel. "My night visions were three-dimensional, lavishly detailed scenes, feature-length films." But when Elise Van Dijk, Abby's childhood best friend and a now-famous actress, returns home for their 10-year high school reunion, her near-erotic dreams of reconnection take on the contours of reality. Weeks after the reunion, Abby hops a plane to LA and shows up out of the blue at Elise's gated front door, where she resumes her role as best friend, confidante, and support system. "I was simply there to listen, to groan in sympathy and glow with pride....I loved the sound of your voice. Whatever its petty grievances or vacuous prattle, I would have been happy to hear it forever." Acampora (The Wonder Garden, 2015) writes propulsive sentences at a fever pitch, guiding the reader through Abby's dream world as she hunts for corresponding clues in a reality of her own making. Told in the second person, the novel is by turns a confession, an accusation, and a stalker's diary, yet it is also grounded by Acampora's musings on philosophy, art, and ambition. While there are more novels than ever dedicated to obsessive female friendship, Acampora takes a relationship story that could have been reduced to petty jealousy and turns it into something bigger and weirder, as if David Lynch had astral projected into the work of Melissa Broder. This is the Los Angeles of weird cults and day-drunk stars, of struggling documentary filmmakers and mysterious but powerful directors. By turns demented, sad, and frightening, Abby is a unique heroine making all the wrong choices feel somehow right and just. Utterly bizarre and completely bewitching, this twisted, delicious tale will grab you from the first page and hurl you over the edge.COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
-
May 15, 2019
In the lead-up to their Michigan high-school reunion, it's clear that artist and grocery clerk Abby has experienced dark times in the intervening 10 years, while her girlhood best-friend Elise adorns glossy pages as a Hollywood starlet. Despite their years apart, Elise tells Abby at the reunion that she must come visit her, which is all the encouragement Abby needs to purchase a one-way ticket on her parents' credit card. In Elise's new Malibu dream home, the old friends revisit the youthful passion neither has abandoned for Perren, an auteur whose holistic approach to filmmaking blurs boundaries between the alert and unconscious mind and whose next film Elise hopes to be in. Abby is a roiling mix of bold self-belief and traumatic self-loathing. Battling demons of her own, Elise smoothes Abby's rough edges with warmth and flattery until a relationship divides them, and Abby plans a score-settling mission. Light on plot propulsion and heavy on dream-retelling, Acampora's first novel following the acclaimed story collection, The Wonder Garden (2015), will appeal to fans of character-driven psychodramas.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.) -
Starred review from May 1, 2019
DEBUT High school best friends Abby and Elise have become polar opposites in the ten years leading up to their high school reunion. Abby, a brilliant artist whose gift for premonitory dreams hides in plain sight on her canvases, lives with her parents and plods through her cashier job at a Michigan superstore, hoarding every detail about Elise that's printed in the tabloids. Hollywood starlet Elise's glam life leaves her wanting more and more. Both women are obsessed with the legendary director Auguste Perren, whose creative institute fosters a cultlike following. When Elise tosses off a casual invitation for Abby to visit her in California "someday," Abby abandons her life in the Midwest, heads to Hollywood, and insinuates herself into Elise's world of wealth, insecurity, and addiction. As Elise's life skids out of control and her dependence on Abby intensifies, Abby's grip on her own vision of reality gains a terrifying power. VERDICT Acampora's linked short story collection, The Wonder Garden, electrified literary critics, and this deeply disturbing, wildly inventive, and completely unpredictable debut novel is sure to do the same. Abby and Elise will be haunting readers' dreams long after the last page. [See Prepub Alert, 12/3/18.]--Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
-
May 1, 2019
Having abandoned her artistic promise, Abby Graven envies former best friend Elise, a rising Hollywood star. But at their high school reunion, Elise proclaims Abby to be the true artist. A debut novel after the story collection The Wonder Garden, a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick.
Copyright 1 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission. - New York Times Book Review "Take The Talented Mr. Ripley, cross it with Suspiria, add a dash of La La Land and mix it all at midnight and this arty psychological stalker novel is what might result."
- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "This is the Los Angeles of weird cults and day-drunk stars, of struggling documentary filmmakers and mysterious but powerful directors... Utterly bizarre and completely bewitching, this twisted, delicious tale will grab you from the first page and hurl you over the edge."
- Library Journal (starred review) "Acampora's linked short story collection, The Wonder Garden, electrified literary critics, and this deeply disturbing, wildly inventive, and completely unpredictable debut novel is sure to do the same. Abby and Elise will be haunting readers' dreams long after the last page."
- Publishers Weekly "An unsettling and surreal excavation of the boundless depths of the human psyche... Acampora's writing is gorgeous and renders with precision and clarity the spiral of Abby's increasingly disorienting world of obsession and hallucinatory imagery. The result is a piercing, disquieting novel."
- Rumaan Alam, author of That Kind of Mother "It seems at first a novel of friendship between women--a rich vein for any writer--but in The Paper Wasp, Lauren Acampora upends convention, creating an unsettling (and impossible to put down) story about art and ambition, fame and power. A beautiful and surprising book."
- Matthew Thomas, author of We Are Not Ourselves "Acampora is an exquisite stylist who misses no shade or psychological texture and who also plumbs depths of feeling in note-perfect prose that leaves one stunned at the artistry on display. The Paper Wasp is a powerful statement of aesthetic purpose, and an unalloyed triumph."
- Caroline Kepnes, author of You "A lyrical, provocative, imaginative page turner that makes the world feel new again, The Paper Wasp is both a stunning portrait of a fixated woman and an addictive, modern commentary on an eternal theme of obsession. In her glittering, goosebump-inducing prose, Lauren Acampora gives us a soul trip/head trip/rarefied LA trip replete with surrealism and social commentary."
- Sandra Newman, author of he Heavens "The Paper Wasp was a crazy joy ride of a novel; a bold and joyous take on female friendship, outsider ambition and the secret powers of loners. It gives us a heroine who is selfish, weird, manipulative, and sometimes just plain nasty, and makes us root for her with all our selfish, weird, manipulative, and nasty hearts. I loved every second of it."
