Amy Falls Down

Amy Gallup #2

by Jincy Willett

Amy Gallup is an aging novelist and writing instructor living in Escondido, California, with her dog, Alphonse. Since recent unsettling events, she has made some progress. While she still has writer's block, she doesn't suffer from it. She's still a hermit, but she has allowed some of her class members into her life. She is no longer numb, angry, and sardonic: she is merely numb and bemused, which is as close to happy as she plans to get. Amy is calm.

So, when on New Year's morning she shuffles out to her backyard garden to plant a Norfolk pine, she is wholly unprepared for what happens next.

Amy falls down.

A simple accident, as a result of which something happens, and then something else, and then a number of different things, all as unpredictable as an eight-ball break. At first the changes are small, but as these small events carom off one another, Amy's life changes in ways that range from ridiculous to frightening to profound.

This most reluctant of adventurers is dragged and propelled by train, plane, and automobile through an outlandish series of antic media events on her way to becoming--to her horror--a kind of celebrity. And along the way, as the numbness begins to wear off, she comes up against something she has avoided all her life: her future, that "sleeping monster, not to be poked."

Jincy Willett's Amy Falls Down explores, through the experience of one character, the role that accident plays in all our lives. "You turn a corner and beasts break into arias, gunfire erupts, waking a hundred families, starting a hundred different conversations. You crack your head open and three thousand miles away a stranger with Asperger's jump-starts your career."

We are all like Amy. We are all wholly unprepared for what happens next.

Also, there's a basset hound.
An NPR Best Book of 2013

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Contemporary, Adult, Audiobook, Adult Fiction, Writing

336 pages, ebook

First published May 1, 2013

About the author

From the author's website: "An aging, bitter, unpleasant woman living in Escondido, California, who spends her days parsing the sentences of total strangers and her nights teaching and writing. Sometimes, late at night, in the dark, she laughs inappropriately." This is also the short bio on her character, Amy Gallup, on her blog in "The Writing Class."

Reviews

[Oriana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know if this happens to other people, but I have this weird thing sometimes where right after I finish a book I think one thing about it (it's rad, it blew, it needed work, the author's a pretentious prick, etc.), but then, many moons hence, I remember it in a totally different way.

Example: When I read The Corrections I thought it was fine, but now I violently, violently hate it. Or: I loaned my friend Megan The Thieves of Manhattan and was all "Oh this was a fun one," but then she read it and was like "WTF this book is so so bad—even you thought so!" because it turned out that I had jotted a lot of clever things in the margins such as "NO NO NO." Or: my friend Hannah told me just today that I gave her shit for not loving Special Topics in Calamity Physics as much as I did, but then I went back and read my review from a couple years ago and it turned out that I only mostly liked it.

What is this about? Is my brain just a complete asshole?

I bring this all up for a reason, which is this: I lovelovelove Jincy Willett, I love all her books, she is smart and funny and delicious and wonderful. I bought a proof of Amy Falls Down as soon as I heard about its existence, and then once I started reading I realized that it was a sequel to The Writing Class and was like "Oh good gracious, I loved that book ever so, and now this one will be the best ever."

And then I came over to good ol' GR and read my old review of goddamn The Writing Class, and WTF, it turns out that I didn't actually really like it that much?!?!?! And I don't even know what to think or do.

Because listen: Amy Falls Down is totally awesome. The chubby misanthropic bitter protagonist is back, and she's chubbier and wittier and self-depricating-er than ever, and she's also warm and (guardedly) kind and even compassionate and (almost) sweet, sometimes. And this book has a real plot, no gimmick, which starts with Amy hitting her head on a birdbath, and ends with the dramatic revival of Amy's failed career in a beautiful, spectacular way. In between there's a basset hound, an extremely eventful cross-country train trip, evisceration of chick-lit and popular fiction, a dead gay ex-husband, Twitter spam about doing it with vegetables, a living room redone as a jungle, a sexy doctor, pathos, chain-smoking, and a whole host of other delightful things.

It's almost like Jincy took the framework from the gimmicky novel and was like, "I wonder what would happen if I redid this in a much more serious manner?" And the results were, predictably, fantastic.

But why didn't I remember that The Writing Club was only so-so? Maybe my brain suppressed that memory because it knew that I should get this one right away. Or maybe I too fell down in a garden and hit my head on a birdbath, and I won't remember any of this tomorrow.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front), folks: I love this book and I want to recommend it to everyone, especially those who are seriously wide-read, "bookish" people who have at least some familiarity with the literary scene, writers' workshops, and the angst of being an aspiring writer (or even a published one).

Next, I want to say that if this book puts you off because of the pink cover and all the people who have shelved it as "chick-lit" — ignore that nonsense. Jincy Willett only writes "chick-lit" if you think a book by a woman about a woman is by definition chick-lit. Amy Falls Down is "writer-lit."

Third, you should know that this book is a sequel to The Writing Class. However, it's a sequel only in the sense that follows chronologically with the same main character. There are some references to the events in the previous book, but you don't have to read it first. Though you really should, because The Writing Class was also wonderful and the reason I discovered Jincy Willett — it's unfortunate that the first book does not seem to be available on Audible.

Amy Gallup is a writer. A dumpy, sixty-something lady who lives alone with a flatulent basset hound, who had a brief up-and-coming moment in her twenties as a "writer to watch out for." She wrote several books that received critical acclaim but only modest sales, and then, for reasons that only slowly emerge in this book, reasons that she herself can't fully articulate, she stopped. She hasn't written much of anything for thirty years. When we first met her in The Writing Class, she was making a meager living teaching creative writing as adjunct faculty at a community college. That book was our introduction to Jincy Willett's scathing and hilarious (yet affectionate) send-up of the modern writing scene, and a cozy-ish murder mystery.

Then Willett comes along and writes Amy Falls Down, in which there is no murder, no mystery, and not even that much of a plot. Yet it's every bit as good as the first book — in fact, possibly better. It reads like something Willett wrote just because she felt like writing it. Which is perfectly congruent with her protagonist, Amy Gallup, who writes when she feels like it, which hasn't been for thirty years.

In the first chapter of this book, Amy falls down. And hits her head on a birdbath. Which gives her a concussion. By coincidence, she had an interview scheduled for that afternoon. A reporter, doing a story on "washed up writers - where are they now?" (not phrased quite that unkindly) was supposed to come to her house to talk to her. To her horror, Amy realizes that she gave the interview and can't even remember it. She goes to the hospital, meets a nice doctor who is, like apparently almost all doctors, a wannabe novelist himself, and then gets a call from her former agent, who informs her that she has suddenly generated "buzz" because of her interview.

As Amy suddenly finds herself attracting (unwanted) attention for the first time in years, she also finds herself writing stories again for the first time in years.

The story is ostensibly the resurrection of Amy's writing career, a resurrection she never dreamed about, cared about, or particularly wanted. Along the way, she attends writers' conferences, bookshop appearances, and radio talk shows in which, pushed once too often, she turns her rarely-deployed but devastating wit on a windbag host and generates more publicity for herself by taking him apart on the air.

You can also see thinly-disguised representations of prominent contemporary authors, bestsellers, in the fictitious authors Amy meets. I won't name names because Jincy Willett is a lot better-read than I am and probably was thinking of completely different names than the ones I thought she was satirizing, but the beauty of her characterization is that every one of these people is real, hilarious, sometimes likable and sometimes buffoonish, but no one is a cartoon. Much of the book is spent inside Amy's head and her interior monologue, which is maybe why people insist on calling this "chick lit" (it's not), but Amy's thought process is human and funny and real, and gives you a glimpse of what a real writer can do when writing about real people with messy, complicated lives even if they are, from the outside, perfectly mundane ones lacking any sort of novelistic drama and adventure.

I hesitate to identify Amy as an author stand-in, even though the similarities between her and her author are too obvious to be ignored. Because I can picture Jincy Willett reading my review and letting out an exasperated sigh about readers who think they're smarter than they are. Not that she'd say anything, because like Amy Gallup, I imagine that Jincy Willett may find people exasperating and annoying, but she doesn't have the cruel streak necessary to actively mock them even if they deserve it.

Since I listened to Amy Falls Down on audio, I can't easily type all the quotable passages I want to fill this review with. Just take my word for it that there is lots of quote material. Willett writes with wit and humor and warmth and sometimes just enough of a sharp edge to let you know that, like Amy, she could really cut you down if she wanted to. But she won't, because she's too nice.

The subplot, with some members of her writing class from the previous book setting up an "authors' retreat," is almost incidental, and for much of the middle section of this book I thought Willett had dropped it completely. It gets wrapped up at the very end, with enough humor to justify its inclusion, but it seems like mostly a bone thrown to readers of the first book. It does, however, continue to skewer the foibles and pretensions of writer wannabes, writer gurus, writers' workshops, and the entire industry that has grown around those who fancy themselves enamored of "the writing life."

Please go read my review of The Writing Class. Then read both these books. Jincy Willett may or may not be the real-life Amy Gallup, but she seems awfully under-appreciated to me. ***** Five Stars! *****

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not sure what category this book should fall into: fantasy, chic-lit, humor??? I started this book really liking it. It’s a story of an author who is reclusive and loves her life in anonymity. An unknown reporter from a local San Diego paper requests an interview with her, and she begrudgingly agrees as long as no photos are taken. Before the interview, she decides to do some garden work, falls down and hits her head on a bird bath. Next thing she remembers, is a flash in her face as the reporter takes her picture and thanks her for the fascinating interview. Her life gets out of control with the publicity from this one interview of which she has no recollection. At this point, I’m very amused. I enjoy Willett’s writing style and her observations. I truly enjoyed her meditations on fiction and literature. “Fiction, when it’s done right, does in the daylight what dreams do at night: we leave the confines of our own experiences and go to common ground, where for a time we are not alone Where we don’t have to ask how it feels, because we feel it for ourselves.” And, “We don’t read fiction to learn facts; we read it to make sense.” “We write fiction to make sense of the world. That requires research.” I also enjoyed how she poked fun at the writing industry. For example, she likened all these writers’ retreats to Weight Watchers: having lit-wannabes paying to go to retreats to do something they ought to be doing on their own. The descriptions of the different characters in the book are hilarious as is the main character’s relationship with her literary agent, Maxine. But then, Willett seemed to lose track of her story line and started writing random bits about the main character’s history. It seemed disjointed to me. And then, towards the middle and the end it got down right fanciful and unrealistic. I really thought that the main character was going to wake up and find out this was all a dream. It’s humorous, but erratic.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amy Gallup, the endearingly cynical protagonist of Jincy Willett’s new novel, would be disgruntled to hear herself referred to as “wickedly funny”, or “savagely ferocious.” Those are just a few of the overused adjectives that she calls out as being in the modern reviewer’s modest arsenal.

It doesn’t take long to recognize that this book is a set-up of the book industry and its precarious relationship with its writers and readers. When Amy takes a fall and bangs her head on a birdbath, she is suddenly – organically – freed to say whatever she wishes without restraint.

Her interview with a reporter is candidly blunt and hilarious…and goes viral. As a result, her old agent Maxine gets back in touch and begins to milk her fame, getting her sit-downs from sources that range from NPR to a Rush Limbaugh-type interviewer…along with a particularly humorous keynote speech at Book Expo America (BEA).

There are some particularly hilarious scenes: for instance, the skewering of a local creative writing guru who advocates exercises and thought experiments. Amy, who is also a mentor for would-be writers, ends off her students’ requests by compiling exercises such as: “Write a story backward, using bulleted lists…Describe a recent outing, then go back and excise all modifiers.”

Other funny moments are Amy’s attack of the term “fearless writer” and her original answer to the hackneyed question about “writer rituals.” Amy answers, “Most writers aren’t all that interesting They spend their time writing, which is not a spectator sport. We don’t write to in order to be admired, or emulated or wondered about. Especially wondered about!”

Interspersed with the laugh-out-loud humor, there are some really good insights into why we write: to fashion sense out of chaos…to achieve order through narrative. Or to use Amy’s words, “We don’t read fiction to learn acts; we read it to make sense.”

There are ample references to Ms. Willett’s prior book, The Writing Class. Although this book makes sense without reading the former book, I increasingly got the sense that it would have helped to have read that book first. There are also forays into Amy’s past – a close gay friend whom she married named Max – which seemed, to this reader, a little too derivative.

I’d recommend especially to would-be writers and power readers – a group that might also enjoy Steve Hely’s How I Became A Famous Novelist, one of the funniest books about publishing I have ever read.

[Sonja Arlow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first heard about this book while reading Dear Fahrenheit 451: A Librarian's Love Letters and Break-Up Notes to the Books in Her Life and the description really caught my attention. I wanted to read something light this week while preparing for my first exam in MANY MANY years and it was the perfect choice.

Amy has a bit of a literary legacy. In her youth she wrote a few masterpieces and then disappeared into obscurity. And she could not be more thrilled about that.

Now in her 60’s Amy successfully manages her expectations of life by having none. But her carefully constructed cocoon of anonymity cracks when she accidentally falls in her garden and smacks her head on a bird bath, right before an interview with a journalist. An interview she later recalls absolutely nothing about. What did she say? Why was the journalist so thrilled when she left? If Amy can just remember.

Like the author Amy is a writing instructor and little titbits on her workshops, advice to aspiring writers and her thoughts on the publishing industry was interesting to read about.

I was not entirely convinced that the things Amy ended up saying was as controversial as the story was trying to make it, but the heart of the story was in the right place.

This was an easy reading, heart-warming story that had just the right amount of levity preventing it from becoming too sappy for me.

Sometimes a smack on the head is the best thing that can happen to a person.

[Roro · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to reading this book. It started out with promise. Then, I suddenly found it excruciating to read. Really! It took me upwards of 3 weeks to read this, and it was only because I didn't want to give up. It never takes me that long to read a book! I kept thinking, it's got to get better!! I dreaded sitting down to read it and did everything I could to avoid it. It was drab, wordy, and unnecessary. The author spoke in, what I call, $3.00 words. Constantly using these elaborate words and phrases to describe the most simplest of things. It drove me nuts! It reminded me of a quote from Auntie Mame, when she was writing her memoirs. Mr. O'Bannion edited her birth scene to say, "Like an echo from the caves of Coccamaura, I came forth, whilst Dierdre wept cool tears." And Mame said, "Wouldn't it be simpler to say "On the day I was born, it rained in Buffalo?" That sums up this book precisely!! The year-long timeline this book covered was boring. There was no real story line. It just droned on and on! The main character could never do wrong, and was, although a loner, conceited and thought herself too good for everyone's good. She was aloof and heartless. The best part of the story was it took place in San Diego. Other than that, it was not worth the long 3 frickin weeks it took me to read. SO GLAD IM DONE!

[Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved, loved, loved this book. As our heroine, Amy Gallup discovered, timing is everything. I began reading this book, quite prophetically, days before I fell down and sprained my knee and I then devoured the book in the day that followed while lying in bed recuperating.

Jincy Willett always can be counted on to make me laugh--and I needed a laugh--but she is also insightful and occasionally profound. Willett is a writers' writer. Yes, her sentences are elegant, her word choices interesting and nuanced and the rhythm of her prose often poetic, but that's not all. She writes about writing, the writing life, and the perils and pitfalls (and the odd, occasional triumph) that litter the publishing minefield, reminding us of what is important, namely not to take ourselves too seriously.

Note: Amy Falls Down is the sequel to Willett's earlier novel, The Writing Class. In my opinion, it can be read as a stand alone, but for those who might need a little time to warm up to the curmudgeonly Amy, perhaps consider reading them in order.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book as it was recommended to me, I assume, based on my incredible enthusiasm for Where’d You Go, Bernadette?. Amy is a has-been writer and a recluse who becomes a viral phenomenon after she speaks with a reporter while experiencing concussion symptoms. What transpires after this initial moment of internet fame is often quite funny. So many of the characters – Amy, her elderly agent, various talk radio personalities, and particularly her dog, Alphonse – were clearly envisioned and felt very real. The problem? There’s no story. I liked the ending, I liked where Amy ends up, but I didn’t see the progress throughout the book that got her there. Instead, she keeps taking interviews about her fleeting fame, repeats her schtick, goes viral anew, and repeat. Each interview was funny, but it was the same thing over and over again. What was funny became tedious. This was a disappointment.

[Maine Colonial · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first Amy Gallup book, The Writing Class, is a (sort of) murder mystery, so I thought this would be as well. It isn’t. At all. But I didn’t mind, because I really like this Amy Gallup character. She’s kind of neurotic, can be a jerk to people, but that’s mostly a defense mechanism, in reaction to the years-ago death of her best friend (and married for convenience) Max. All that background is set up in the first book.

This book starts about a year after the events of the first book, and all seems about the same in Amy’s life, except that she teaches her writing classes remotely. Her fall changes everything. After years of being blocked, Amy suddenly begins writing again. She gives a newspaper interview, while (unknowingly) concussed, that draws attention, including contact from her old literary agent, Maxine, a pushy, chain-smoking dame who somehow fits perfectly with Amy while being her polar opposite. The ball begins rolling and Amy is now out in the world, talking about books on the radio and even in public, traveling beyond the San Diego area.

Though Amy’s old writing class characters are part of this book, the focus is very much on Amy and the world of writing and publishing. Boy, is Amy opinionated about that! She is no fan of branding and authors being required to use a lot of social media. Her plain-spoken views spark debate, including on her own modest and extremely quirky blog.

Amy is not a character who will appeal to everybody, and not everyone will be interested in a book that is so focused on writing and publishing. But I enjoyed it tremendously and am looking forward to reading the next book in the series, which is coming out soon after a nine-year wait.

[Jaclyn Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I usually read in a fairly narrow comfort zone, containing mostly urban fantasy, science fiction, feminist theory and memoir, and some popular histories. I rarely read lit-fic, because most of it feels either pretentious or obvious, at least to me, accustomed as I am to wizards and intricate magical systems. There are no wizards or magic in Amy Falls Down, but I loved it to little tiny pieces.

This is a sort of sequel to what I believe was Jincy Willet's last novel, The Writing Class, about murders in a community college writing workshop. The teacher of that class, Amy Gallup, returns here, but there are no murders and no mystery. Instead it's funny. The Writing Class was funny too, but you occasionally had to stop laughing because people were being murdered. Although there is some pathos and sadness, mostly there's grinning as Amy navigates her second bit of fame, won by giving a bizarre newspaper interview after she's hit her head on the birdbath. Because Amy is in her 60's and used to being anonymous, she doesn't really care what anyone thinks of her. She talks off the cuff on the radio, gives long rambling speeches about reading, and eviscerates a Rush Limbaugh style radio personality. All of a sudden, her books might be back in print, and she has tons of hits on YouTube.

I want everyone to read this. It made me want to write, and Amy's reflections on her life feel real and honest.

[Melissapalmer404 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book #50 Read in 2013
Amy Falls Down by Jincy Willett

Amy is a writer...well, she used to be but she hasn't written anything in years. She is more famous for a writing group where one of the members tried to kill people. Then she has an accident in her back yard, hitting her head on a birdbath, and when she comes to, a reporter is leaving her house and Amy has no recollection of what she had said. The article comes out and Amy is made out to be a wonderfully eccentric talent, when in reality she had taken leave of her senses temporarily. That article begins to bring media attention back on Amy and her former agent begins booking Amy for radio shows and speaking engagements. Amy has no filter and takes no prisoners.

This book had a lot of humor in it. I enjoyed the references to books and to the writing process. However, the writing was a bit disjointed and at times the book dragged for me. Overall though, I thought it was a good read.

I received this book from the Amazon Vine program in exchange for a review.

http://melissasbookpicks.blogspot.com

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5+ stars. Hilarious book with a delightfully prickly narrator. Several times I snorted out loud; even my daughter said she’s never heard me do that. Amy Gallup is an aging, semi-reclusive writer who hits her head on a birdbath and accidental fame ensues. I can see how reviewers might quibble with Amy being an “unlikeable” character and I think the author would agree; that’s the whole point. She’s a grumpy old man – funny in spite of herself. And her basset hound is an awesome character in his own right, as are the many, many ancillary folks in the novel.

This definitely needles the publishing industry (including the agents). The author is based in San Diego, where I live, and I did wonder if she was often poking fun at local people in the writing community and at large. I’ve taken the “extension” courses she semi-flames. I will say, despite the tongue-in-cheek nature of the book, there are some poignant insights about why we read and why we write, all cloaked in Amy’s dry wit.

[Tracie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amy Falls Down begins with the story of a woman in her 60's living a very quiet life. She has her books, her dog, her online writing course, and she is content enough. A small accident changes all that forcing her not only to question her present lifestyle, but also her practice of not really living within her lifestyle. She is forced into the limelight and back into the present.
I really enjoyed the majority of the novel. The character of Amy is charming, witty, and quirky. Too bad the author wasn't content with allowing the story to be just that - a character study. Instead she winds up doing what Amy herself hates in novels, she decides she has to have a moralistic ending. I found the ending to be maudlin, forced, and out of character. For me, this book was a 4 star read until the ending made it a very weak 3.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do I describe Jincy Willett's latest book? By saying she is one of the most brilliant and under-appreciated authors alive today? By comparing her snarky wit to that of Dorothy Parker and David Sedaris? By describing my reading process when it comes to a book this good (continually pausing to savor what I just read and keep from racing through too quickly)? Whatever I say won't be enough: "Amy Falls Down" is a brilliant follow-up to her equally engrossing "The Writing Class" (stop reading this blurb and go pick up "The Writing Class!), and a funny, insightful look into the publishing world and the mind of Amy Gallup, the dark and lovably bitter writer at the heart of it all. Do yourself a favor and read this book!

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

First, the book had one great sentence. As a resident of this little bizarre corner of the country, transplanted from the solid midwest, I loved this: "This is Southern California, where all promises are hypothetical".

It's so true. If you invite and get RSVPs from 20, expect 12 to show and 10 to actually eat.

As for the book....I just didn't care. I didn't care about Amy, I thought it was a hot mess of storylines, I thought the "accident" was weird. It was simply not what I was expecting. If you are a writer, an aspiring writer, or somehow really care about the industry, it might appeal. Forgettable is the shelf I'd be placing this one on.

[Vivienne Strauss · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were things I liked about this book but so many things I didn't. Found myself constantly questioning if the author of this book wasn't actually doing what Amy was against. Sort of sums up everything I really dislike about the world right now - including my ability to write a review. Opinions are like a**holes - everyone has one but perhaps they shouldn't be exposed for everyone to see. I waffled between giving this 2 or 3 stars, opted for 3 since I did finish though found I was starting to skim at the end.

[Jaylia3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilariously funny, while still managing to be moving and insightful

This book is so funny I kept losing my place because I was laughing so hard, and I almost never laugh out loud while reading. Amy Gallup is an aging, has-been novelist, who never really broke through to the big time anyway, but that’s fine with her. Amy embraces her uncompromising lack of ambition and, far from seeking fame, she arranges her life for complete anonymity, even burying links to her out of print novels behind a series of obscure questions on her website. She has her opinionated Basset Hound Alphonse, her devoted writing students--not that she craves anyone’s admiration, but she does need an income and a little company--and a nice quiet life. Then she’s interviewed while still not quite in her right mind after falling and hitting her head and the world begins to take notice. One thing leads to another until, horror of horrors, she becomes a sought after celebrity expected to fly around the country to do media appearances and conference speeches.

Though the story sounds like it might be just absurd, it has more substance than that. It’s elevated by Amy’s piercingly apt and intelligent (and usually, yes, hilarious) observations about the world and people around her, and by Amy’s need to confront past issues she had years ago chosen to avoid.

Amy Falls Down is the second book Jincy Willett has written featuring Amy Gallup, but while I now can’t wait to get my hands on the first it was fine to read them out of order. The other Amy novel is a murder mystery, which has really piqued my interest because, at least on the surface, that’s very different from this second book and I want to see how the author handles it.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I'd put this book on my to-read list because it was supposed to be funny. Certainly it did have me laughing at times, but it's not a light-hearted funny, more of a serious look at the absurdity of your life funny.

Amy is an older writer, she had some success in her 20's but has been pretty dormant after the death of her 1st husband and a few other misfortunes, subsisting on the proceeds of her online writing courses. When one day she falls down, hits her head on the birdbath in her back yard. When she's next fully conscious she's waving goodbye to a reporter who had just interviewed her for a newspaper article on little known writers. The kooky interview she gave (while not in her right mind) generates a lot of buzz. And suddenly her agent calls, she's on the talk show circuit, in high demand for mentoring writers, and actually writing again.

Amy is not a sweet old lady, she's very sarcastic and critical of others, especially would be writers. And although she tells her students not to put too much coincidence in her novels, there are a lot of them in this novel. Amy grows on you eventually as the novel progresses. Ms. Willet's prose (and vocabulary) is the shining star, she has some amazing "wish-I-could-write-like-that" descriptive scenes.

Life can take some crazy paths, especially when you hit your head on a birdbath.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dog-lovers will love this book! Alphonse, the basset hound, may be the real star of the story.

Women my age (and younger), especially those who teach writers or coach writers, should like this book, especially if they are somewhat cynical about the publishing industry.

Yes, Amy Gallup literally falls down. She hits her head on the birdbath in her garden. That leads to her being rediscovered as a writer.

Oh, and Amy’s someone to know…she hates planes, loves trains, was in college in 1967 and is somewhat paranoid about today’s social media and its role in the lives of today’s writers.

On page 295, the author Willett tells us: “Thelma had a story -- everyone has a story – but she did not seem to know what it was, and didn’t know she didn’t know. Knowing what your story is, Amy was fond of telling her classes, was what separated writers from everyone else.”

Yep…I believe that.

Thanks to my friend Kay for this recommendation…an NPR Best Book of the Year.

[Ginny Sharkey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amy Gallop's life motto is the same as that of the honey badger - she really doesn't give a S@*t. Gallop thinks she's far past the prime of her life, spending her days with her aging basset hound, Alphonse, and holding online classes for wannabe writers. An accident in her back yard causes her to black out - and she gives an outrageous interview to a local reporter who's discovered Amy's distant past as a lesser-known-but-well-respected author. Adventures ensue as she spirals into the public consciousness - not quite believing that anyone would care about what she has to say, which leads to hilarious scenes. Just as enjoyable are Amy's thought processes as a writer- we're given a bird's eye view of a complicated, creative inner world with story lines to spare. (You may want to cannibalize some of them for yourself)

[Meghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The humor in this kept making me snort out loud. Amy Gallup is a reclusive writer in her 60s, alone except for her basset hound. She lives an interior life, full of ruminations on stuff like the intricate way her basset hound cleans his paws. After hitting her head on a birdbath in the backyard and suffering a concussion, Amy gives an out-of-character interview to a local reporter, and then when the story comes out in the paper, she has no recollection of saying any of the eccentric things written on the page. What follows is a zippy plot where a character who doesn't care or have anything to lose achieves success. And the elderly basset hound not only doesn't die, he becomes a hero. Fun.

[Elly Sands · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jincy,Jincy,Jincy-I love that name and really enjoy her writing! I'm not sure how I heard about this author but I'm really glad I did. Her humor is very dry, witty, sometimes dark but always clever and it doesn't sound contrived. It reads as though her thoughts are just tumbling out one after another. This book is not just about her humor. It's very much about writing. The main character Amy, is a writer so the novel is filled with ideas and various scenarios regarding writing. It's almost like taking a class but all spun around a wonderful story. I will definitely read more of Jincy's books. This again is another author I would like having as a friend.

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Bookclub for choosing this book. I don't think I would have stumbled upon this amazing writer on my own and I certainly would not have picked it by the title. The protagonist, Amy Gallup is one of the richest, most insightful, not to mention clever and hysterical characters I have ever met and I feel like her words (and there are many) will stay with me for a long time.
Maybe it is because she and I share the same demographics, or that we both live with an aggressive internal dialogue and insightful pets that I could so identify and admire her. While the narrative is "accidental" the tale is pure genius. Just goes to show, never judge a book by it's cover.

[Meribeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am really enjoying this book, it has some laugh out loud descriptions ("The receptionist was of indeterminate age and species, the first cosmetic surgery victim....looked as though a crew of thugs had starved her, forced her to break rocks in the blazing sun, inflated her breasts, and punched her in the mouth.") as well as some really thoughtful observations such as "Fiction, when it’s done right, does in the daylight what dreams do at night: we leave the confines of our own experiences and go to common ground, where for a time we are not alone. We don't have to ask how it feels, because we feel it ourselves."

[RJ · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't care for this book, and I know I'm in the minority. It just just wasn't my kind of book, I guess. Although it was humorous in places, I was mostly bored with the book. When I start dreading continuing on with a book instead of "can't wait to get back to it," I know it's time to quit. I was bored with it and didn't finish.

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book about a cranky hermit of a writer. She falls down, does some weird stuff and ends up doing things completely uncomfortable to her. It is thoughtful, reflective, funny, weird and taught me a few new words. It also makes you think about the publishing industry, the way new things (or old things) end up going viral and our addiction to social media.
It was a delight.

[Kristin Rounds · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a brilliant follow-on to The Writing Class, which I also loved. People who know me know that I almost never give a book five stars. Anyone who reads this book will know why I did it this time.

[Risa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious!! Great book to cozy up with pretty much anywhere.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amy Gallup is my new favorite literary character. I never reread things but will reread this for sure.

[Lynnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quotes:

* The problem with residents wasn’t that they were overworked. They were over-young. They behaved as though dying people were an alien species, a series of problems and opportunities, and nothing to do with their own corporeal futures.

* “Despair,” Max would say, “is a walk in the park. It’s hope that kills you.”

* “But what if you wake up one day and you’re old and your life is almost over, and you realize all the things you could have had?”

* What was wrong with this man? He was clearly no happier than she, yet the constant, grim pursuit of happiness was mandatory, according to him and all his happy-slappy California pals.

* Afterward, vigorously shaking hands with Amy, she reassured her that they’d be doing this again “soon.” She seemed sincere—she seemed downright eager—but Amy didn’t take her seriously. This was Southern California, where all promises were hypothetical. I’ll call you Monday, if I remember to. We’ll do dinner, if I ever feel like it. I’ll drive you to the hospital for your cancer surgery, unless my boyfriend wants to take me to Laughlin.

* talent wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Stamina, perseverance, and hunger for criticism were much more indicative of future success.

* It always bothered her when critics praised writers for being “in full control of their craft.” You were, or should be, in full control of your sentences, but you had no more control over your stories than a sailor does over the weather. And if you do control your story, the weather isn’t real: you’re sailing a toy boat in an old MGM tank.

* She had imagined herself real in their minds—not deeply understood, as only Max had understood her, but still distinguishable from other people, unique, not quite a cipher—and all the while she had had only two dimensions.

* after Max died, she had neither wanted nor needed to be known by anyone… What did it mean that now, after all these years, she wanted to be known again?

* Love was possible only through knowledge. Or perhaps knowledge only through love. In the beginning, it was I know what you’re up to. I know what you did. I know you like that guy. And then I know you feel like hell. I know you can do better than that. I know your childhood stories, your most embarrassing moment, what frightens you more than anything. I know what makes you laugh.

* My point was pretty much the one you’ve just made: that successful fiction isn’t junked up with ill-fitting events. On the other hand, actual lives are. Ask any biographer. Part of his job is to ignore or somehow morph the stuff that doesn’t fit. Our narratives are incoherent, at least until we recollect them in story form. The lives of many of us, most of us, do not follow classic narrative arcs, SamLWeiss. Some have competing arcs, going off in all directions, like bad flower arrangements. My own arc probably looks like a polygraph readout. So far, I guess, I’m character-driven, but I’m pretty sure I don’t lead a genre life—not even a lit-fic life. Do you? And I know, and so should you, that at some time in the future my arc, and your own, will be derailed by a cheap plot device. Perhaps I’ll put that on my tombstone.

* I’ve never seen the point of collecting things, especially books. If you collect things, you have to worry about them and put them in boxes or covers or behind glass, and you never actually use them.”

* She and Maxine were apparently becoming like family, with that familial raising of the rudeness threshold.

* By the time she pulled up to the station, all her muscles ached from having been clenched for the last ten miles of a journey which had, of course, been wholly uneventful. There was no great relief, no gratitude mixed in with the exhaustion. Phobic episodes always ended with a vague sense of anticlimax, even disappointment, as though underneath all the terror she had been hoping for the very worst to happen. A Platonic catastrophe.

* When she was young, she had lived in the future: looking forward to some events her greatest happiness—the anticipation always more thrilling than the thing itself; dreading other events a full-time job.

* she allowed the thought, just for an instant, that this would someday be a memory.

* Why seek out the men and women behind the page, when the best of us is on it?”

* “I am here accidentally and just for the moment,”

* Had they ever seen a person die? Had they ever seen a body subside, abandoned like an old suit by its departing spirit? They ditch us, the dead, they shrug us off and leave us with nothing. Memories were worthless. At least to Amy, who remembered words and sounds, not images. No sooner had he left than she began to forget his face. She could describe it in detail, build it feature by feature, sentence by sentence, but he had taken all the pictures with him. And he had taken more. He had taken his memories of her, his knowledge of her, leaving her unknown. And now she had to wonder if he had known her at all. // Here was grief. The ongoing erosion of faith. The dead do not simply leave. They go on leaving forever, and what they leave behind stirs, shifts, fades. Amy almost cried. Then she took out her notebook and began to write.

* “We are all the heroes of our own stories,” said Brie, “but all that means, as Mary McCarthy said, is that we live in suspense from day to day.”

* She had always resisted the idea of herself as a perceptible, memorable object. Of course she knew she was more or less visible, that her corpus could be sensed by human and animal alike, but from childhood she had found it difficult to believe that she lingered in memory when she wasn’t in the room. When a neighbor child or teacher or classmate would say, “We were just talking about you” or “I thought of you the other day when…,” she would be startled and put off. Why would they think or talk about her? What was wrong with them, that they were reduced to filling up head space with Amy? She wasn’t offended or paranoid, just mystified.

* There was a famous problem in philosophy called Identity Through Time. Amy, who had majored in philosophy as an undergraduate, had found it, along with most problems in philosophy, intriguing but not very. Let’s say on Monday you have a car and on Tuesday you replace the muffler. Is it the same car on Tuesday as it was on Monday? Well, obviously. But what if, over time, you replace every part of the car, from the chassis to the engine to the horn. Is it now the identical car? Well, no. So, at what point did it lose its identity? This was where Amy always nodded off. At some point, she would think, to be discovered by someone with a more persistent intellect than hers. Still the underlying issue entertained. What does it mean to say the same car, the same house, the same woman?

* It was the mother who told Thelma she was a “born storyteller.” This was false. She had phenomenal recollection of detail—what any true writer could have done with that!—but no sense of what made a story worth telling.

* Thelma rambled through a childhood recorded but not really taken in. Listening to her was like viewing someone’s vacation slides. Of course, Thelma had a story—everyone has a story—but she did not seem to know what it was, and didn’t know she didn’t know. Knowing what your story is, Amy was fond of telling her classes, was what separated writers from everybody else.

* What a shame that all of Thelma’s hoarded data, all those images she had categorized, dusted, and polished, every one of them was gone.

* The thought that he would die sooner rather than later was unbearable, except that it wasn’t, because everything was bearable. We are built for suffering, she knew; we do it well.

* When Max got sick she had suffered strenuously, tormenting herself through sleepless nights as though grief could be prepaid in installments.