Stop Me If You've Heard This One
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- £11.99
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- £11.99
Publisher Description
FOR ANYONE WHO'S EVER BEEN CALLED FUNNY AS AN INSULT
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things, a sparkling and funny new novel of entertainment, ambition, art, and love.
Cherry Hendricks might be down on her luck, but she can write the book on what makes something funny: she's a professional clown who creates raucous, zany fun at gigs all over Orlando. Between clowning and her shifts at an aquarium store for extra cash, she's always hustling. Not to mention balancing her judgmental mother, her messy love life, and her equally messy community of fellow performers.
Things start looking up when Cherry meets Margot the Magnificent - a much older lesbian magician - who seems to have worked out the lines between art, business, and life, and has a slick, successful career to prove it. With Margot's mentorship and industry connections, Cherry is sure to take her art to the next level. Plus, Margot is sexy as hell. It's not long before Cherry must decide how much she's willing to risk for Margot and for her own explosive new act - and what kind of clown she wants to be under her suit.
Equal parts bravado, tenderness and humour, and bursting with misfits, magicians and mimes, Stop Me If You've Heard This One is a masterpiece of comedic fiction that asks big questions about art and performance, friendship and community, and the importance of timing in jokes and in life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Arnett (Mostly Dead Things) paints an irresistible portrait of the artist as a clown. In the five years since Cherry's hilarious and financially successful older brother, Dwight (who was also their mother's favorite), died, she has sought to always be the funniest person in the room. Now she spends her afternoons and weekends on the Orlando, Fla., birthday party circuit, alternately delighting and terrifying young children as Bunko, an aspiring rodeo clown who's terrified of horses, and sneaking breaks to seduce the moms, more than a few of whom harbor a secret clown fetish. A stultifying job at a dysfunctional aquarium store pays the bills (sort of), but Cherry is serious about perfecting her art. To that end, she pursues a mentorship (with benefits) with beautiful older magician Margot the Magnificent. Throughout, Cherry's wisecracking first-person narration masks the sorrow of her mother's indifference, as well as her irritation with the challenges of being queer in central Florida: "Clowning requires a kind of steeliness that I associate with my coming-out process: the knowledge that there will always be people in life who will hate you for who and what you love." Despite, or perhaps due to, its absurdity and bittersweet undertones, Cherry's story makes a powerful case for pursuing one's art authentically and fearlessly. It's a riot.
