Tourmaline (34 page)

J
OANNA
S
COTT
is the author of six previous books, including
The Manikin,
which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize;
Various Antidotes
and
Arrogance,
which were both finalists for the PEN/ Faulkner Award; and the critically acclaimed
Make Believe.
A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Lannan Award, she lives with her family in upstate New York.

Also by Joanna Scott
Make Believe

“Wonderful…. There are things in this novel that take the breath away…. As is made dazzlingly clear in
Make Believe,
Joanna Scott is a Michael Jordan: she has talent to burn…. Scott inhabits the souls of the least articulate characters and makes them sing…. What we get is one of the most convincingly impressionistic versions of a difficult childhood that I have ever read…. There are occasions when the author’s ingenuity and command of her craft make you want to laugh with pleasure…. One cannot help urging anyone who loves writing to read this book.”

— Nick Hornby,
New York Times Book Review

“Elegant, rich, and completely spellbinding.”

— Deborah Sussman Susser,
Washington Post Book World

“A powerful novel…. As
Make Believe
builds in emotional intensity to its dramatic conclusion, Scott’s narrative probes the psychological states of her characters and explores how a single decision can completely change lives.”

— Joan Hinkemeyer,
Denver Rocky Mountain News

“Scott masterfully balances the perfection of the child’s imaginative interior world with the errant turbulence of adult life…. Her brilliant prose resonates with awe at the wondrous ‘ability of life to sustain itself.’”

—Trey Strecker,
Review of Contemporary Fiction

“The opening sections of
Make Believe,
which depict Bo’s experience of the car accident that killed his mother and his new life with his paternal grandparents, are as powerful as anything the gifted Ms. Scott has written. They possess the unsettling intensity of Benjy’s interior monologue in Faulkner’s
The Sound and the Fury
…. The penultimate chapter, which sends Bo’s life skidding off in yet another direction, contains a dazzling set piece that showcases all of Ms. Scott’s virtuosic skills.”

— Michiko Kakutani,
New York Times

Available in paperback wherever books are sold