The Pretty Girl: Novella and Stories

by Debra Spark

From Victorian toy theatres to a painting with a mysterious story behind it to a graphic novelist's battle with the schizophrenia which causes her cartoon characters to march off the page, the novella and six stories in Debra Spark's fourth work of fiction, The Pretty Girl, revolve around artists, artistry, and the magical--sometimes malicious--deceptions they create. With settings that traverse New York's Lower East Side, Victorian London, Paris and Switzerland, Spark's stories twist and turn in mesmerizing ways as they reflect on the fictions we fabricate about and for friends, family, and strangers.
In one story, a woman finds her life unexpectedly dramatized on the stage; in another, a couple's reconnection with a family friend leads to a labyrinth of mysteries and miscommunications. In the tour-de-force "A Wedding Story," Simon Baal Shem, a charming five-inch rabbi found in a chocolate egg offers life advice in the form of Jewish stories. Gritty and elusive, Spark's stories work like the best magic tricks, seeming to defy the laws of reality even as they deftly extend and reinvigorate those laws. Readers who love magical realism, illusions, Jewish literature, and art, will be captivated by Spark's wonderfully textured The Pretty Girl.

Genres: Short Stories

330 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2012

About the author

Debra Spark is the author of The Pretty Girl, a collection of stories about art and deception that will be published in April 2012 by Four Way Books. She is the author of the novels Coconuts for the Saint, The Ghost of Bridgetown and Good for the Jews. Spark edited the best-selling anthology Twenty Under Thirty: Best Stories by America's New Young Writers and her popular lectures on writing are collected in Curious Attractions: Essays on Fiction Writing. Spark has also written for Esquire, Ploughshares, The New York Times, Food and Wine, Yankee, Down East, The Washington Post, Maine Home + Design and The San Francisco Chronicle, among other places. She has been the recipient of several awards including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Bunting Institute fellowship from Radcliffe College, and the John Zacharis/Ploughshares award for best first book. She is a professor at Colby College and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and lives with her husband and son in North Yarmouth, Maine.

Reviews

[Marian Szczepanski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read more novels than story collections, but I'm glad I broke the novel habit to read The Pretty Girl. Spark is a virtuoso in characterization and achieves it with remarkable economy, laying bare the very marrow of people you've just spent several pages with, yet feel as if you've followed and eavesdropped on them most of their lives. I loved the disarmingly conversational narration, drawing me in like the asides of a sly, perceptive friend. Time and again, I felt as if I were sitting onstage, surrounded by major and minor players entering and exiting while stagehands placed props and pieces of scenery. Then, as the story concluded, I suddenly found myself in the theater's tenth row, dazzled by the big picture: every seemingly disparate component in place and utterly necessary. And I thought, once again, wow, HOW does she do that?

[Lauren Alwan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A painting can be a mirror or a window, the art historical theory goes, but in Debra Spark’s fourth and newest work of fiction, it is more likely to be a puzzle. Art is a product of deception after all, and in this collection, a novella and six stories, the puzzling and the deceptive abound. Illusions, miniatures, stories hidden in pictures, pictures inside stories—these run through the lives of Spark’s characters as mysteries of a familiar nature: hidden family histories, missed opportunities with those who are closest, and the inevitable unknowability of spouses, siblings, parents.

Read the entire review at Litstack: http://litstack.com/?p=6977

[Suzanne Hamilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the way Debra brings her characters to life, through the telling details of their thoughts and observations. I also enjoy her quirky sense of humor, which shines through. I heard her read this week; she said that all the stories are about art and deception, which they are.

[Tabitha (Tabi Thoughts) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I couldn't bring myself to finish this book of short stories. The entitled novella "The Pretty Girl" was undoubtedly my favorite of all three of the stories that I read from this collection. I'm sure these stories are appreciated by some, but as hard as I tried.. I couldn't get into them. However, the author has a very imaginative voice and a creative mind.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

See my review at http://www.thereportergroup.org/Artic...

[julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always forget how much I enjoy a good short story. The stories in this book are diverse and interesting ... Looking forward to reading more of Debra Spark!

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great novella and a range of interesting and compelling stories.