Lauren Acampora

The Paper Wasp by Lauren Acampora is a highly recommended, dark, twisted tale of a friendship between two women.

Abby Graven is stuck at her parent's house in Michigan working as a cashier in a supermarket. She obsessively creates detailed drawings of visions from her dreams that are often premonitory, and she follows the films of director, Auguste Perren. She also obsessively follows the acting career of her former best friend, Elise Van Dijk. When Abby and Elise reconnect at their ten-year show more high school reunion, a drunken Elise gives Abby her private number. Later Abby shows up in Hollywood and calls Elise. This results in a renewal of their friendship as Elise confesses she has no real friends and she invites Abby to stay with her. Abby becomes a pillar of support, a confidante, and a personal assistant to Elise.

Abby watches as Elise drinks too much, dates an arrogant, narcissistic man, and doubts her abilities while resenting the other egotistical actresses around her, but she also claims to be an artist, which embitters Abby. This novel shows the weird, dark side of Los Angeles and Hollywood. It also brings Abby closer to her idle, Auguste Perren, and his Rhizome retreat/compound, which teaches actors to use their dreams. Elise attends as if it is nothing, but Abby has obsessed with being there for years and religiously follows and practices Perren's dream-imaging techniques. At the same time Abby is still having her dream/visions and drawing them.

As would be expected, this reconnection is not going to result in anything good. Told in the second person, this is a disquieting, twisted, ominous novel that is the story of an uneven friendship, obsessions, a confession of hidden secrets, and a dairy of stealthy plans. Even when you know it is going to take a foreboding turn, it still will hold your attention, and the turn it does take is simultaneously unexpected and obvious.

The writing is excellent, even while it is taking bizarre turns, and you will find yourself compulsively reading just one more chapter. The ending is frightening and ominous, but Abby can explain and justify every turn she takes, as if it were all predetermined - which it has been through her dream visions. If it sounds like this is a rather odd visionary tale, it is. It is akin to a diary written to your obsessions.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Grove/Atlantic.
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Abby lives a boring life in Michigan working as a cashier at a store. She was supposed to be so much more successful. She is obsessed with her childhood friend Elise, a successful actress in Hollywood who graces the covers of magazines that Abby collects. She also has vivid dreams that she records in her drawings.

Elise returns to Michigan to attend their 10-year high school reunion, and Abby knows that she must go to see and try to talk to Elise. She dreams about a purple dress which she show more then finds at a thrift store. When she sees Elise at the reunion, they begin talking on a couch that is exactly like the couch she dreamed of. The still have a strong bond, and Elise invites Abby to look her up if she comes to California.

A few weeks later, Abby abandons her life in Michigan, boards a flight to Los Angeles, and calls Elise. Though surprised, Elise invites Abby to her home. Soon she is asking Abby to stay with her and eventually to become her personal assistant. Elise also brings Abby to a creative resort run by their favorite film-maker Perren.

The novel is written as though the reader is Elise and Abby is speaking directly to her. What starts as strange turns gradually more eerie. More of Abby’s dreams come to fruition as she increasingly grows an enmity toward Elise who Abby sees as unworthy of her success. She hides these thoughts from her friend, but works behind Elise’s back to carry forward her own ambitions.

When Elise becomes pregnant, she and her boyfriend plan a wedding in his home country of Argentina. Abby comes along but speaks poorly of Elise to a photographer who sells the story to the tabloids. This devastates Elise who never figures out it was Abby who started the rumors. Meanwhile Abby does not return to her life with Elise. Soon after her return to California, Elise’s marriage falls apart. She begs Abby to return and help her, but Abby ignores her pleas.

Abby returns to Michigan to visit her sister, a drug addict and mother of a young child. The visit is really a ruse to steal her sister’s purse and her and her child’s identities. Abby’s plan continues when she attends a costume party that Elise and her new child are attending. Abby pulls a fire alarm and during the chaos, Abby steals Elise’s baby.

Abby secures passports for herself and the baby using her sister’s documents and leaves the country. She turns up on Perren’s door in Switzerland, shows him her drawings of her dreams that depict his home and family. He sees her talents and ability to dream and draw places and events from her dreams, and he invites them to stay with him on his property. All of Abby’s dreams have come true.

I found this to be a page-turning novel full of strange and dark moments. The author is a terrific writer, and I loved her use of language. The story is uncanny, and the magical realism forces the reader to question reality and imagination. I am left feeling that Abby is really just sitting in her bedroom in Michigan alone, having fantasized the whole thing. show less

The Paper Wasp is a psychological thriller with a generous dash of surrealism. This is a story of love and malice, envy and ambition, a simmering pot of suspense and madness with generous helpings of Dada. Abby and Elise were best friends since kindergarten. Abby the smart and creative one, Elise the beauty, they had grand ambitions fueled in part by their mutual admiration for the surrealist filmmaker Auguste Perren. At their ten-year reunion, though, only Elise was making progress on their show more dreams, establishing herself as an actress in Hollywood while Abby’s college career ended in failure her freshman year, sending her back home to work as a cashier. Elise casually invited Abby to visit and before you know it, Abby was her personal assistant, living in Elise’ home and organizing her life.

Of course, the childhood dynamic is not restored. Abby, after all, is in the background, largely unnoticed when she accompanies Elise. Elise is the creative one, the actor inhabiting her roles, studying at Rhizome, the retreat established by Perren. Abby’s intellect and art are hidden away, praised by Elise in private, but not given their due. Adding to the complications, Elise is dating her leading man Rafael and Elise is not impressed, except in her dreams. From the beginning, we understand that Abby feels surges of energy and sloughs of despair, a bipolar disorder that she recognizes and takes advantage of, using those surges to galvanize dramatic acts that alter their lives.

The Paper Wasp is a compelling thriller that grabbed me from the first page and never let go. It is also a masterclass in foreshadowing.

I remember discovering the word ‘adumbration’ in “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon”, Rebecca West’s masterpiece. After looking it up, I admired the word as an example of West’s fearless precision with language. I wondered if I would ever have a chance to use it since it makes more sense to use foreshadowing, a word everyone knows. The slight distinction, that adumbrate is a faint, subtle and vague foreshadowing would not merit using an uncommon word. However, The Paper Wasp really is all about adumbration, just a discordant word, a subtle, sly expression that gains meaning in hindsight. This adumbration, with its subtly builds a sense of menace beneath the warmth of friendship that is true suspense. It is so effective that when dramatic shifts happen, the reader will feel more completion than surprise.

Even the title, The Paper Wasp, is adumbration, from a class discussion duringAbby’s freshmen year about the not-quite symbiotic relationship of paper wasps and an orchid in which the wasps pollinate the orchid. You can see the correlation to Abby and Elise, the plain and the beautiful, the worker and the star, but there’s more to this metaphor than the obvious externals. It is that subtly that makes this a masterful story.

The Paper Wasp will be released June 11th. I received an e-galley from the publisher through Edelweiss.

The Paper Wasp at Grove Atlantic
An excerpt as short story was published in Guernica.

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I imagine this will be a "love it or hate it" book, and I loved it. What starts out as a relatively minor obsession with a former-friend-turned-Hollywood-star (keeping magazine clippings while living halfway across the country isn't particularly noteworthy) quickly turns into something stranger, more possessive, more bizarre once Abby shows up in LA unannounced and becomes part of Elise's life again. There's a slow slide from excitement and eager friendship, to subtle manipulation and show more possessiveness, to a sense of supreme arrogance and condescension as Abby's proclaimed devotion to the craft of storytelling gives her a sense that she is more deserving of the industry's attention than Elise. The inside look at Abby's mind is unnerving and fascinating, a glimpse at what's almost megalomania and sheer entitlement that seems the most natural thing in the world for Abby. Will the mask come off? Will there be any consequences? This book had me dumbstruck and spellbound up to the last page. show less