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Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles
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  • Published: 26 March 2014
  • ISBN: 9780143124429
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $45.00
Categories:

Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles

A Novel

Formats & editions
EBook
7 Feb 2013
Audiobook
7 Feb 2013
Paperback
26 Mar 2014
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A bold, arresting new work of fiction about the impossibility of love and the inevitability of grief from the acclaimed author of Everything Matters!

A bold, arresting new work of fiction from the acclaimed author of Everything Matters! and the forthcoming novel The One-Eyed Man (March 2017)

In this tour de force of imagination, Ron Currie asks why literal veracity means more to us than deeper truths, creating yet again a genre-bending novel that will at once dazzle, move, and provoke.

The protagonist of Ron Currie, Jr.’s new novel has a problem­—or rather, several of them. He’s a writer whose latest book was destroyed in a fire. He’s mourning the death of his father, and has been in love with the same woman since grade school, a woman whose beauty and allure is matched only by her talent for eluding him. Worst of all, he’s not even his own man, but rather an amalgam of fact and fiction from Ron Currie’s own life. When Currie the character exiles himself to a small Caribbean island to write a new book about the woman he loves, he eventually decides to fake his death, which turns out to be the best career move he’s ever made. But fame and fortune come with a price, and Currie learns that in a time of twenty-four-hour news cycles, reality TV, and celebrity Twitter feeds, the one thing the world will not forgive is having been told a deeply satisfying lie.

What kind of distinction could, or should, be drawn between Currie the author and Currie the character?  Or between the book you hold in your hands and the novel embedded in it? Whatever the answers, Currie, an inventive writer always eager to test the boundaries of storytelling in provocative ways, has essential things to impart along the way about heartbreak, reality, grief, deceit, human frailty, and blinding love.
  • Published: 26 March 2014
  • ISBN: 9780143124429
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $45.00
Categories:

About the author

Ron Currie

Ron Currie is the author of four novels. He has won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, the Addison M. Metcalf Award, the Alex Award, and the Pushcart Prize. His books have been translated into fifteen languages, and his short fiction and nonfiction have received recognition in Best American anthologies. As a screenwriter he worked most recently on the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations and has developed projects with AMC Studios, Amblin Television, and ITV America. He lives in Portland, Maine and teaches in the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast MFA program.
portrait photo of Ron Currie

Also by Ron Currie

God Is Dead
The One-Eyed Man
Everything Matters!
See all

Praise for Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles



Praise for Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles

"So blisteringly funny that I laughed as I hadn't laughed in years: we're talking demonic, unstoppable, don't sit next to that guy howls." --The Washington Post

"Currie's most grounded work yet...the story grapples with losses past, present, and future...Currie's gorgeously questioning prose explores the deeper meaning things gain after they are gone." --The New Yorker

"The novel's untraditional, stylized pacing is expertly executed, delivering a story equal parts dark humor and unpreventable tragedy...sharp and sarcastic, Currie's dramatic story keeps you tethered in place...it's a truly genuine love story wrapped in a series of comically improbable events." --thedailybeast.com

"A powerful, brilliant, compelling novel about love, writing, fame, fiction and shame that is emotionally effective and intellectually engaging, coming as close to anything I've read, to meeting David Foster Wallace's call for fiction that makes the head beat like the heart...after three decades of metafiction and a handful of successful novels with characters named after the authors, you think there's nowhere else for Currie to go with this conceit, but again he confounds and exceeds expectations." --bookslut.com

"Currie is busting up narrative to explore the blurry line between fiction and memoir...he means to test how much we allow a story to affect us when a story is 'true' instead of 'fake.'" --The Minneapolis Star Tribune

[A] fascinating novel...well written and easy to get caught up in." --The St. Louis Post Dispatch

"A wild story...by turns bitingly funny and despairingly bleak...told with a breathtaking brutal honesty." --The Santa Cruz Sentinel

"Resounds with humor and insight into love, loss, and reality...An astonishing feat of innovation with surprises on nearly every page, Currie's entrancing novel marks the work of a scathingly comic virtuoso." --ALA Booklist

"A postmodern love story, self-consciously playful...things get both crazy and interesting...moving and hilarious." --Kirkus Reviews

"A metafictional tangle of debauchery and technological anxiety...Told in a bouncy, pinball style, this darkly droll novel is never boring." --Publishers Weekly

"Currie stays true to his gutsy, thoughtful, and unconventional self in this brilliant meditation on life, death, truth, and imperfection. Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles is flimsy like a brick sh*thouse. Ron Currie, Jr. is a fearless and inspired writer at the top of his game. Read him." --Jonathan Evison

"Both a brilliantly constructed inquiry into the nature of reality and a soulful ode to the free fall of obsessive love. These two spines interweave ever more tightly till they fuse into a dazzling question mark with no easy answers. This is a beautiful book." --Kate Christensen