Posts Tagged ‘Rufi Thorpe autographing’

Media Center: ‘Dear Fang with Love’ by Rufi Thorpe

May 17th, 2016

WHO: Rufi Thorpe

WHAT: DEAR FANG, WITH LOVE, a novel

WHEN: Published by Knopf May 26, 2016

WHERE: The author lives in California.

WHY: “Thorpe has written an absolute winner.
“Describing the Vilnius, Lithuania, where she’s gone on a summer history tour with her father, 17-year-old Vera emails her boyfriend, Fang, back in California: ‘So there is a thing called baroque architecture, and the word baroque means “imperfect pearl,” which I think should be made into a sexual euphemism for clitoris.’ The epistolary form is often an obstacle for writers, but these emails, interspersed throughout the book—otherwise narrated by Vera’s father, Lucas—bring tremendous depth and texture to the narrative, and also showcase Thorpe’s fabulous versatility, insight, and humor.
“Lucas and Vera are getting acquainted with the father-daughter relationship, as well as the country where they’ve arrived. Lucas didn’t meet Vera until she was four, and spent only weekends with her several years after that. Their sudden close companionship comes in the wake of Vera’s recent psychotic episode, after which she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which Lucas is struggling to accept and hoping to understand better over the course of the trip. Lucas, whose grandmother hailed from Lithuania, comes with a fair number of his own emotional complications, including his mythic and tangled ancestry.
“But while the themes of the book — mania, the Holocaust, and the devastating number of ways that any parent-child dynamic can go awry –are undeniably dark, Thorpe’s prose is light, often hilarious, and unshakably grounded in the concrete details of daily life.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, in a featured, starred review

“Melancholic and whimsical at once,
Thorpe’s novel is quirky and wholly original.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS

“A stirring story.” —Cortney Ophoff, BOOKLIST

Jacket photo

Media Resources:
About the book and author | Read and excerpt | Author tour | Download the jacket | Download the author photo

Knopf. 303 pages. $24 ISBN 978-1-101-87577-3


Publicist for this title:
Katie Schoder | 212-572-2103 | kschoder@penguinrandomhouse.com