Editorial Content for The Answers
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Reviewer (text)
When we first meet Mary, the character at the center of Catherine Lacey’s THE ANSWERS, she is undergoing a quiet kind of crisis. Burdened by debt, agonized by a variety of mysterious physical ailments, and saddled to a terrible job at a travel agency, she is in desperate need of a change. Her best friend, Chandra, recommends that she pursue a course of Pneuma Adaptive Kinesthesia (PAKing), which indeed does relieve her physical symptoms almost immediately. But they are also remarkably expensive, meaning that Mary has to pursue another job in order to maintain her therapy.
"At times, THE ANSWERS can leave readers feeling chilly, but it also offers numerous opportunities for reflection on modern culture, the limits of science and the mysteries of love."
So when Mary sees a mysterious announcement for a lucrative “income-generating experience,” she decides to pursue it, even through several rounds of bizarre interviews and background checks. It turns out that Mary is the perfect candidate for the position. She’s part of what’s been dubbed the “Girlfriend Experiment,” matching several different women with a single Hollywood star, each of them instructed to fill a certain need (the Maternal Girlfriend, the Anger Girlfriend, the Mundanity Girlfriend, etc.). Mary, who grew up homeschooled in an isolated, deeply religious household with virtually no contact with the outside world, is the perfect choice to be the Emotional Girlfriend. Since she had no familiarity with the movie star, she can approach him on a neutral, more genuine level.
After an opening section written from Mary’s first-person perspective, the book’s second part expands to offer glimpses into the lives and backstories of several other characters, including other women participating in the Girlfriend Experiment, the Hollywood star and his adoring assistant. Narratives of sexual and physical violence, emotional detachment and alienation run through these brief chapters, before the story returns to Mary’s increasingly isolated and disorienting perspective in the novel’s closing part.
Characters in THE ANSWERS can feel like types or tropes rather than fully realized human beings, but that’s kind of the point. The Girlfriend Experiment reduces individuals to a single trait, codifying behavior under the assumption that there can be a formula resulting in companionship, or emotional fulfillment, or catharsis, or any number of other functions intended to be served through romantic relationships.
“How to best love? How to know anything, for certain, in another’s heart?” These are the questions posed by the Girlfriend Experiment, and ostensibly answered in the most logical way possible. But logic only goes so far, as Mary’s story, and others, illustrates. At times, THE ANSWERS can leave readers feeling chilly, but it also offers numerous opportunities for reflection on modern culture, the limits of science and the mysteries of love.
Teaser
Mary Parsons is a young woman living in New York City and struggling to cope with a body that has betrayed her. All but paralyzed with pain, she seeks relief from a New Agey treatment called Pneuma Adaptive Kinesthesia, PAKing for short. And, remarkably, it works. But PAKing is prohibitively expensive and Mary is dead broke. So she scours Craigslist for fast-cash jobs and finds herself applying for the “Girlfriend Experiment,” the brainchild of an eccentric actor, Kurt Sky, who is determined to find the perfect relationship --- even if that means paying different women to fulfill distinctive roles. Mary is hired as the “Emotional Girlfriend” and pulled into Kurt’s ego-driven and messy attempt at human connection.
Promo
Mary Parsons is a young woman living in New York City and struggling to cope with a body that has betrayed her. All but paralyzed with pain, she seeks relief from a New Agey treatment called Pneuma Adaptive Kinesthesia, PAKing for short. And, remarkably, it works. But PAKing is prohibitively expensive and Mary is dead broke. So she scours Craigslist for fast-cash jobs and finds herself applying for the “Girlfriend Experiment,” the brainchild of an eccentric actor, Kurt Sky, who is determined to find the perfect relationship --- even if that means paying different women to fulfill distinctive roles. Mary is hired as the “Emotional Girlfriend” and pulled into Kurt’s ego-driven and messy attempt at human connection.
About the Book
Written by one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists, Catherine Lacey's THE ANSWERS is a "novel of intellect and amplitude that deepens as it moves forward" (The New York Times) about a woman learning to negotiate her ailment via the simulacrum of a perfect romantic relationship.
Mary Parsons is broke. Dead broke, really: between an onslaught of medical bills and a mountain of credit card debt, she has been pushed to the brink. Hounded by bill collectors and still plagued by the painful and bizarre symptoms that doctors couldn’t diagnose, Mary seeks relief from a holistic treatment called Pneuma Adaptive Kinesthesia --- PAKing, for short. Miraculously, it works. But PAKing is prohibitively expensive. Like so many young adults trying to make ends meet in New York City, Mary scours Craigslist and bulletin boards for a second job, and eventually lands an interview for a high-paying gig that’s even stranger than her symptoms or the New Agey PAKing.
Mary’s new job title is Emotional Girlfriend in the “Girlfriend Experiment” --- the brainchild of a wealthy and infamous actor, Kurt Sky, who has hired a team of biotech researchers to solve the problem of how to build and maintain the perfect romantic relationship, casting himself as the experiment’s only constant. Around Kurt, several women orbit as his girlfriends with specific functions. There’s a Maternal Girlfriend who folds his laundry, an Anger Girlfriend who fights with him, a Mundanity Girlfriend who just hangs around his loft, and a whole team of girlfriends to take care of Intimacy. With so little to lose, Mary falls headfirst into Kurt’s messy, ego-driven simulacrum of human connection.
Told in Catherine Lacey’s signature spiraling, hypnotic prose, THE ANSWERS is both a mesmerizing dive into the depths of one woman’s psyche and a critical look at the conventions and institutions that infiltrate our most personal, private moments. As Mary struggles to understand herself --- her body, her city, the trials of her past, the uncertainty of her future --- the reader must confront the impossible questions that fuel Catherine Lacey’s work: How do you measure love? Can you truly know someone else? Do we even know ourselves? And listen for Lacey’s uncanny answers.
Audiobook available, read by Megan Tusing
