Named to Most Anticipated and Must Read lists by Huffington Post,
W, Nylon, Elle, Buzzfeed and Chicago Reader
Written by one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists, Catherine
Lacey's The Answers is a "novel of intellect and amplitude that
deepens as it moves forward" (The New York Times) about a woman
learning to negotiate her ailment via the simulacrum of a perfect
romantic relationship.
Mary Parsons is broke. Dead broke, really: between an onslaught of
medical bills and a mountain of credit card debt, she has been pushed to
the brink. Hounded by bill collectors and still plagued by the painful
and bizarre symptoms that doctors couldn't diagnose, Mary seeks relief
from a holistic treatment called Pneuma Adaptive Kinesthesia--PAKing,
for short. Miraculously, it works. But PAKing is prohibitively
expensive. Like so many young adults trying to make ends meet in New
York City, Mary scours Craigslist and bulletin boards for a second job,
and eventually lands an interview for a high-paying gig that's even
stranger than her symptoms or the New Agey PAKing.
Mary's new job title is Emotional Girlfriend in the "Girlfriend
Experiment"--the brainchild of a wealthy and infamous actor, Kurt Sky,
who has hired a team of biotech researchers to solve the problem of how
to build and maintain the perfect romantic relationship, casting himself
as the experiment's only constant. Around Kurt, several women orbit as
his girlfriends with specific functions. There's a Maternal Girlfriend
who folds his laundry, an Anger Girlfriend who fights with him, a
Mundanity Girlfriend who just hangs around his loft, and a whole team of
girlfriends to take care of Intimacy. With so little to lose, Mary falls
headfirst into Kurt's messy, ego-driven simulacrum of human connection.
Told in Catherine Lacey's signature spiraling, hypnotic prose, The
Answers is both a mesmerizing dive into the depths of one woman's
psyche and a critical look at the conventions and institutions that
infiltrate our most personal, private moments. As Mary struggles to
understand herself--her body, her city, the trials of her past, the
uncertainty of her future--the reader must confront the impossible
questions that fuel Catherine Lacey's work: How do you measure love? Can
you truly know someone else? Do we even know ourselves? And listen for
Lacey's uncanny answers.
