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About the Author: A Novel
This was first put on my radar when Jennifer Weiner mentioned it as an all-time favorite in WSIRN Episode 234: The Recipe for a Delicious Summer Read. Fun and twisty, this 2002 novel is about an author behaving badly—which seems to be a common theme around here lately, as you'll see when you open up the 2021 Summer Reading Guide. Jen shared such an enticing synopsis on the podcast: "[It's about] a young man who is desperate to be a published author and his nerdy roommate who it turns out is secretly writing a book. Then the nerdy roommate dies in a tragic accident and what does the aspiring young writer do? Discover his work in progress, take it to a literary agent, publish it as his own, and everything is going great except then it turns out the roommate might not be as dead as we thought."
About the Book
Publisher’s description:
Despite a severe case of writer’s block, Cal Cunningham dreams of writing a novel that will permit him to escape from his life as a penniless stockboy in dirty and dangerous upper Manhattan bookstore. However, when his roommate is suddenly killed in a bicycle accident, Cal is suddenly the author of a page-turning autobiography. Propelled to the top of the bestseller lists with million-dollar movie deals, Cal finds that he has realized his most outlandish fantasies of literary success. That is, until he discovers that someone knows his secret.
A searingly funny psychological thriller, About the Author delves into the excesses of the publishing world and shows that sometimes the difference between reality and imagination can be fatal.
Other books in "Quick Lit May 2021"
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