True Story - Readings

Description

Inventive, electrifying and daring, True Story is a novel like nothing you ve ever read before.

*One of Entertainment Weekly s top five reads of the summer*

A mind-blowing page-turning un-put-downable heartwarming empathetic formally inventive horror suspense thriller, with a life-affirming and timely feminist message Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot

This debut novel unfolds like a mystery, flitting between genres to weave an inventive tale Buzzfeed (29 Summer books you wont be able to put down)

After a college party, two boys drive a girl home: drunk and passed out in the back seat. Rumours spread about what they did to her, but later they ll tell the police a different version of events. Alice will never remember what truly happened. Her fracture runs deep, hidden beneath cleverness and wry humour. Nick - a sensitive, misguided boy who stood by - will never forget.

That s just the beginning of this extraordinary journey into memory, fear and self-portrayal. Through university applications, a terrifying abusive relationship, a fateful reckoning with addiction and a final mind-bending twist, Alice and Nick will take on different roles to each other - some real, some invented - until finally, brought face to face once again, the secret of that night is revealed.

Startlingly relevant and enthralling in its brilliance, True Story is by turns a campus novel, psychological thriller, horror story and crime noir, each narrative frame stripping away the fictions we tell about women, men and the very nature of truth. It introduces Kate Reed Petty as a provocative new voice in contemporary fiction.

About the Author

Kate Reed Petty lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has been published by Electric Literature, American Short Fiction, Los Angeles Review of Books Blog, and many others, and her short films have appeared on Narrative magazine and at the Maryland Film Festival. She is also co-author of the children s graphic novel Chasma Knights, with Boya Sun. Petty graduated from the College of William && Mary, and earned Kate and she holds a master of letters in fiction writing from the University of St Andrews, Scotland.