P&P Live! Aimee Bender — THE BUTTERFLY LAMPSHADE - with Bethanne Patrick

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Thursday, July 1, 2021 - 6:00pm

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On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting to take the train to Los Angeles to go live with her aunt and uncle. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she's sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see.

Twenty years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment, and two other incidents -- her discovery of a desiccated beetle from a school paper, and a bouquet of dried roses from some curtains. Her recall is exact—she is sure these things happened. But despite her certainty, she wrestles with the hold these memories maintain over her, and what they say about her relationship to reality.

Aimee Bender is the author of the novels The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake—a New York Times bestseller—and An Invisible Sign of My Own, and of the collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Willful Creatures, and The Color Master.

Bethanne Patrick is the editor, most recently, of “The Books That Changed My Life: Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors, Musicians and Other Remarkable People.” Her monthly column on hot books appears in The Washington Post, and you can find her on Twitter at @TheBookMaven.

 

P&P Live!
Washington, DC 20008
Fiction & Poetry
Offsite
The Butterfly Lampshade: A Novel By Aimee Bender Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9780307744180
Availability: Special Order—Subject to Availability
Published: Anchor - June 8th, 2021

Not Signed or Personalized