ABOUT MY DEBUT NOVEL:
"Funny, fast-paced and incisive," A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS is a novel about a young singer at sea. At first Karla is thrilled to be hired as a cruise ship entertainer aboard the MS Sound of Music. She's less than thrilled, four years later, to find she's become a lounge singer cliche. In luxury hotel bars in Dubai and Shanghai, Karla learns to fake it; A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS "captures the performances we use to get through" (Harcourt).
"Like a literary 'Lost in Translation.' Lara Tupper shows us an absurdly touching sliver of life." (Anne Edelstein Literary Agency, www.aeliterary.com)
(Pix from the Books. Etc event on 6/8/07 in Portland. Scroll down to see!)
BIO
I'm a fiction writer from Maine, now living in NYC. Please visit my website for more about my debut novel, A Thousand and One Nights, out now from Harcourt.
(Here's a handy link to Amazonia.)
NEW WORK
Check out my 6-word memoirs on Smithmag.net:
http://www.smithmag.net/community/people.php/Lara_Tupper
The Believer, January 2008 (book review of Pat Barker's LIFE CLASS): www.believermag.com/contributors/?read=tupper,+lara
Five Chapters, Short story ("Freizeit"): www.fivechapters.com/freizeit/
REVIEWS, A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS
ELLE.COM, 2/2/07: "Sometimes a novel's premise is so out there that it perversely manages to feel like real life, with all its stranger-than-fiction twists and turns. Such is the case with Lara Tupper's debut, A Thousand and One Nights, an alternately hilarious and poignant look at the unsettled state of one young woman trying to make it outside the socially sanctioned college-office-marriage trajectory.
Our heroine, a plucky (but not annoyingly so) 22-year-old named Karla, drifts first into a job as an entertainer on the MS Sound of Music cruise ship, then into an affair with a shuffleboard supervisor/nightly musical performer named Jack. When Jack suggests extending their fling to an on-land professional partnership, they quickly embark on a surreal showbiz circuit of hotel bars in such far-flung locales as China and Dubai.
Along the way, Karla begins to question her adventure-for-adventure's-sake personal ethos, as well as suffer from the toll exacted by faking enthusiasm for a living. Both an off-kilter take on the conventional coming-of-age tale and a sly commentary on the underbelly of celebrity culture, this truly original book is basically uncategorizable—blissfully so."
LIFETIME.COM, 3/7/07: "'A Thousand and One Nights' is...funny and insightful and told in prose as resilient as [protagonist] Karla's spirit. Keep an eye on Lara Tupper; she is sure to go far."--Rebecca Oppenheimer, National Book Critics' Circle member
THE THE BOSTON GLOBE, 3/11/07: "Shrewdly observed and redolent of inside information."
THE SACRAMENTO BEE. 3/4/07: "Add [this] title to your must-read list: 'A Thousand and One Nights' by Lara Tupper." Allen Pierleoni
THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 2/4/07, and CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER, 3/14/07: Cited as "New in Paperback."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY: "Tupper proves herself a canny observer of the insular world of nomadic entertainers.”
FROM ELIZABETH STROUT: "Wonderful and incisive, A Thousand and One Nights tells us in a new way what it means to be young and American. Tupper casts a keen, intelligent eye on the contemporary world, its multitude of fakeries and deceits, providing us with a witty, poignant, wholly worthwhile read."— author of Abide with Me and Amy and Isabel
FROM JIM SHEPARD: "A Thousand and One Nights [is] beautifully understated in its emotional intelligence, and wry and clear-eyed and psychologically astute... This is a moving and accomplished first novel." --2007 National Book Award Nominee for Like You'd Understand Anyway
FROM JOAN SILBER: "Lara Tupper has written an intriguing, often funny, and richly atmospheric novel that follows a young, hipper-than-that couple singing their same-old songs on cruise ships and in the luxury hotels of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Shanghai. It is sharply observed, fresh and authentic in its vision, poignant in its depiction of a couple's willed façade, and great fun to read. Its keen-eyed view of the strange and cushioned world of entertainers makes for a one-of-a-kind book, fascinating and honest." — 2004 National Book Award nominee for Ideas of Heaven
FROM ALISON LURIE: "A surprising look into an unexpected world." -- author of Pulitzer Prize-winning Foreign Affairs
Anne Cammon of Canada's ELEVENTH TRANSMISSION writes, "Tupper’s language is almost tonal in its simple, unfettered communication of her characters’ conditions... In A Thousand and One Nights, Tupper presents a steady and detailed observation of a
woman struggling to confront her own illusions." 6/07
Reviewer MATILDAKAY says very nice things aboout ATAON, including "the behind the scenes look at shipboard life had me clawing for a Kleenex from snorting with laughter." Matildakay.com, 5/4/07.
