Perfect Reader

by Maggie Pouncey

Book Overview

In this delightful debut novel, a daughter of a quaint New England college town returns to confront her father's legacy and the surprising pieces of life he has left behind. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307474801
• ISBN13: 9780307474803
• Release Date: July 2011
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Reader As Understander

This is a very well written and intelligent new novel. The basic plot concerns Flora, a not very happy woman in her late 20's, who leaves her job at a New York City magazine to come home to a small New England college town in order to settle the estate of her recently deceased father. Her father was a prominent academic specializing in the poets Larkin and Hardy and also the former president of a prestigious college which sounds a lot like Amherst (complete with the museum/home of a poet who shares several characteristics of Emily Dickinson) even though the author chooses to call town and college Darwin. Flora soon finds she has not just inherited her father's house and money but also some unpublished poems of which he wished her to be the literary executor. Although she at times wishes he had left this duty to someone else she also learns a lot about her childhood, her parents and her adult self along the way. The novel is seamlessly written and seems so genuine I have to believe some of it is autobiographical. Author Pouncey presents characters that are well rounded, consistent and memorable. Her portrayal of the elite college town of Darwin and its rather self absorbed inhabitants is one of the best parts of the book. And though Flora can be an annoying character she is always an interesting one. Though a relatively short book it is not a quick read but one the reader wants to take time to savor. PERFECT READER will be a favorite of many thinking, literature loving, book lovers.

Well-Written Exploration of Grief, A Portrait of Loneliness

**** I viewed this book as an exploration of the main character--Flora--and of her grief, of her complicated relationship with her deceased father, her complex relationship with her mother, her woundedness from events that happened in her childhood, and her difficulty getting through life as an adult. The story flashes back between Flora's childhood and memories of her father and the present time in her life. It is very introspective, and thus definitely not for every reader. But I absolutely loved it. I should say that I am currently grieving the loss of my best friend, so I was in the right mood for such a tale; I think that the reader really needs to be up for a novel that is a bit dark and sad. There would be other times in my life when it wouldn't interest me to read about someone processing her grief, but as it was, I couldn't put the book down. It helped me greatly in processing some of my own grief. If this sounds interesting to you, you'd be the right reader for this book; otherwise, not. I think that many people will not be able to relate to Flora as she isolates and pushes people away--I was though. Flora was not a particularly sympathetic character, but she was real, and I found much in the way she handled things that I could relate to personally. I even found comic relief in the town of Darwin--an ultra-liberal, green, intellectual college town with a culture all its own. There were many funny things about academia, about life in a small college town, about writers and readers--and I enjoyed it all. I gave this book only four stars because I think it has a more limited audience than many books. Although very well-written, I think that many people will be uninterested and unable to relate to the characters that the author so beautifully describes. I was fascinated by Flora, both of her parents, and her best friend Georgia; all of the characters were rich. Grief has a rhythm all its own, though, and grieving people focus on and obsess about things that don't concern others. One thing I particularly enjoyed was how at the beginning of the novel I wasn't sure if Flora even loved her father much, and then as things progressed, I could see her love for him emerge bit by bit as she dealt with her anger, jealousy, possessiveness, etc. This novel is a lovely portrait of mourning. I would recommend it for those who are interested, but not for those who aren't. ****

Talented new writer

Columbia University can be proud of their MFA graduate and a new writer Maggie Pouncey. Her first published book is a true literary feast. Readers who appreciate fine words and a quick wit will love her book about a young woman, not yet thirty, whose father suddenly dies of heart failure. Her father is academic, living in a small college town. He was also college's former President well known to most residents of the town. Her parents are divorced and although divorce took place almost two decades ago, our heroine seemingly never got over it. Book goes back and forth between main character's childhood and her adulthood. She has a task to reconcile her feelings for her parents and also make peace with her past. Her father's inheritance: large house, a dog, a lover she did not know existed and non-published work of poems are not making her grieving process easiers. After all, the love poems are not dedicated to her mother but rather to a woman she barely knows. I enjoyed this fine read and I am looking forward to Ms. Poncey's future works. She has a fine mind and a way with words. This is a bright new star in a literary world that was long overdue.

Intelligent, Intellectual and Heart-Strong

Perfect Reader is a novel of character, in the sense of well-drawn characters and in the sense of doing "right." This is the story of the educated elite who trumpet their concern over recycling, pet ownership and local wildlife, while remaining blind to the concerns of financially desperate working class people who live twenty miles away. My guess is that you would have to find their concerns (literary criticism, literary research, lectures, faculty jostling) interesting to find this book interesting. I thought this book was beautiful and merciless and sad, like the main character, Flora Dempsey. Flora is educated, financially comfortable, undeniable privileged and profoundly unhappy. Her parents' divorce, a childhood accident, a lack of talent equal to her father's; whatever the source, the author has carefully presented just how miserable this young woman is, and how mean that makes her. She returns to the fictional town and college of Darwin to sort out her father's home and papers after his death. He's a respected critic and who was at one time president of Darwin college. He's respected enough that Harold Bloom is at his funeral, which sets off a small cascade of referential in-jokes at Bloom's expense. My point is, either you'll gobble that up or you'll roll your eyes. I laughed. One of the burdens of intellectualism the way it can strip away the comforts and consolations available to people who don't study everything to death--hobbies, service to others, honest physical labor. Flora tries to take a class, walk the dog, make the best of her freedom from work, but she suffers from that profound disaffection of sitting smack in the middle of her WASP privilege while feeling alienated from all the other people sitting alongside her. She doesn't understand that even though she despises her fellow members of the elite, she's still one of them. Flora reserves her ultimate scorn for religion. There is a truly ugly scene in which Flora responds with violent anger to the idea of faith in someone she is trying to love. Somehow, the author's refusal to dress up how self-centered this woman is allows the reader to develop some sympathy for Flora. She's sometimes insufferable, but that's because she's miserable. You have to forgive her. As a reader, you really do pull for Flora Dempsey in this novel. You want her to come to terms with her parents' divorce, and their passion for others, and their private lives that do not include her. At least I did. The author, like the character, doesn't provide resolution in the areas of right and wrong, good and bad. This is risky in a plot, but tremendously refreshing. Instead, there is forward movement, and unfettering, and the sense that work has been done and life will go on. All in all a hopeful message, with a great deal of interesting and intelligent writing about poetry and academics along the way.

Her Father

Pouncey, Maggie. "Perfect Reader: A Novel", Pantheon, 2010. Her Father Amos Lassen Flora Dempsey grew up in a small and quaint New England town. She was the only child of Lewis Dempsey who was a noted academician and college president. When she received news that her father died, Flora resigned from the magazine where she had been working in the big city and returned home to live in her father's house. She was appointed as executor of her father's literary estate and she discovers that her dad was writing poems near the end of his life and these were love poems to a girlfriend that Flora was totally unaware of. Flora is stuck in this and has no idea how to get through it all--what does she do with the poems and how does she react to the girlfriend who would like to be part of Flora's life. Memories of her parent's divorce flood her and she is uncertain of her own future. This is a story about loneliness and how sadness and grief over the loss of a parent can make someone look at life differently. Flora is haunted by the memory of her father and his life and now must make decisions about her own life. Pouncey gives us a book that is written as beautiful literature and she combines wit and intelligence. This is a look at the relationship between fathers and daughters from a new perspective and Pouncey pulls us in on the first page. The book also explores life in a college town and she enchants us with her beautiful prose.