Undone
A Novel
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Already hailed and persecuted for its perverse humor and wildly wicked sensibility, Undone is the tour-de-force black comedy by International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Nominee John Colapinto.
In modern day America, Dez is a former lawyer and teacher — an ephebophile with a proclivity for teenage girls, hiding out in a trailer park with his latest conquest, Chloe.
Having been in and out of courtrooms (and therapists’ offices) for a number of years, Dez is adrift, at odds with a society that persecutes him over his desires. From his couch one afternoon, Dez watches an interview with Jasper Ulrickson, a doting father and loving husband whose heartrending memoir, Lessons from My Daughter, has become a national bestseller. The memoir chronicles his journey with his wife, Pauline, who suffered a stroke giving birth to their only child and has been in a locked-in state ever since. Espousing their deep connection and chaste marriage, Jasper’s selfless devotion to his wife has made him one of the most popular and admired men in America.
So Dez sets out to do what any red-blooded American would do: destroy Ulrickson by using Chloe to pose as the famous author’s long-lost daughter, infiltrate his family, seduce him, and, when
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New Yorker staffer Colapinto's novel (after About the Author) is an over-the-top, irreverent, and darkly comical thriller. Dez, an ephebophile and convicted sex offender, has been fired from a high-school teaching job for being romantically involved with a 17-year-old student named Chloe. Unemployed, dejected, and hiding from the authorities in a northern Vermont trailer park, he passes time watching an Oprah-esque TV show called Tovah in the Afternoon. While watching the program one day, Dez learns from Chloe that her recently deceased mother had a brief summer flame with mystery-writer-cum-bestselling-memoirist Jasper Ulrickson roughly nine months before she was born. With this information in mind, Dez conjures a ruinous scheme to land the orphan Chloe under the wealthy Ulrickson's custody, so she can seduce him into incestuous relations, file charges to claim monetary compensation, and in turn destroy his reputation. The wily Dez is able to pull the necessary strings to set the plan in motion, but an unlikely and absurd series of twists follows, leaving no character unscathed. Aggressively offensive and deliberately silly in its treatment of stock characters, scenarios, and tropes, Colapinto's novel oscillates between highly ironic and deeply earnest treatments of this taboo subject matter. The story tackles sexual and moral dilemmas that are worth contemplating, delivering them at a breakneck and often entertaining pace.
