Disappearing
Ingenue: The Misadventures of Eleanor Stoddard
by Melissa Pritchard
Winner of The Pushcart Prize and one of "Borders Bestsellers"
Anchor
Books
a division of Random
House, Inc.
New York 2003
Paperback
This wildly imaginative collection presents the misadventures
of unlikely heroine Eleanor Stoddard as she tries to lead an exemplary
life but finds that things just keep going awry. In the summer after sixth
grade, she dreams of being as courageous as Anne Frank. As a teenager,
her sudden devotion to Catholicism coincides with her crush on a nun.
As a suburban housewife who suspects her husband of having an affair,
she imitates Nancy Drew to try to solve her own personal mystery. And
as a middle-aged woman, she embarks on a trek through Central America
accompanied by a rescued laboratory gorilla. While Eleanor makes her way
through a whirlwind of adventures with life and love in which she is constantly
reinventing her identity and rethinking her priorities, she manages to
become a first-rate student, a published poet, and a loyal mother. Each
story offers a glimpse into her familiar and charmingly odd journey, and
she comes hilariously to life in these disarming tales.
(synopsis from www.randomhouse.com)
Praise -- for more reviews and praise of this book, click here.
"Dreamy and delightful."
--Alan Cheuse, "All Things Considered"
"Pritchard has a sure touch. She knows just how
much to tell, and how much readers should intuit. . . . It's risky to
compare any other author to Steinbeck, . . . but, just possibly, the potential
is there."
--Fort Worth Star-Telegram
"An imaginative free-for-all . . .[Eleanor] is a
persona moved from one circumstance to another, to dizzying and often
funny effect."
--The Arizona Republic
"Melissa Pritchard is one of our finest writers."
--Annie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
"Pritchard's meticulously crafted prose bursts at
its own seams with inventiveness."
--The Harvard Review
"Stories, like their heroine, so brave and full
of life."
--Kirkus Reviews
"Like Flannery O'Connor, Melissa Pritchard treats
odd, cruel dilemmas with dispassion, and as if by some fictional law of
absence of overt charity toward deprived or crippled characters produces
in the reader a sense of their memorably unmediated presence upon the
page."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Impressive . . . With each story the collection
gains momentum . . . Pritchard's prose is spare and wrenching."
--Publishers Weekly
"[Pritchard's] writing . . . is beautiful, graphic,
aggressive -- and always smart."
--The Bloomsbury Review
"Wildly imaginative . . . Endearingly quirky."
--Glamour
"Delightfully odd."
--Entertainment Weekly