Want to impress the hot stranger at the bar who asks for your take on 'Infinite Jest'? Dying to shut up the blowhard in front of you who’s pontificating on Cormac McCarthy’s “recurring road narratives”? Having difficulty keeping Francine Prose and Annie Proulx straight?
Officer Francine Fribble is dedicated to enforcing the laws of grammar. Join her on her rounds and see how she uses her training as a proofreading policewoman to stop sloppy sentences all over town!
A Sight for Sore Eyes tells three stories, and for the longest time, the reader has no inkling of how they will come together. The first is a story of a little girl who has been scolded and sent to her room when her mother is brutally murdered; as Francine grows up, she is haunted by the experience, and it is years before she even speaks. Secondly, we become privy to the life of a young man, Teddy, born of unthinking young parents, who grows up almost completely ignored. Thirdly, we meet Harriet, who from an early age has learned to use her beauty to make her way in the world.
New Grub Street portrays the intrigues and hardships of the publishing world in late Victorian England. In a materialistic, class-conscious society that rewards commercial savvy over artistic achievement, authors and scholars struggle to earn a living without compromising their standards. "Even as the novel chills us with its still-recognizable portrayal of the crass and vulgar world of literary endeavor," writes Francine Prose, "its very existence provides eloquent, encouraging proof of the fact that a powerful, honest writer can transcend the constraints of commerce.”
