Early Reviewers George Rabasa

No other obsession strikes as hard as the love that hits a teenaged boy especially if he's the sort of kid who is no saner than he wants to be. From the moment Adam Webb sees Francine Haggard in the van that is supposed to return them to the Institute Loiseaux the two young mental patients are inextricably connected. Adam will never let this girl go. From hiding her in his bedroom to spiriting her away to Minnesota's north woods, Miss Entropia becomes the focus of Adam's every thought and of everything he does. He believes her to be a goddess, his own goddess. But the pyromaniacal Miss Entropia will be neither worshiped nor owned. And so Adam's possessiveness is destined to push her to the breaking point. Theirs is an incendiary love story, an unbalanced Romeo and Juliet, that spins and arcs its way strangely toward tragedy.

Mark Lockwood's life is a small one. He's made his living as a freelance writer, producing a series of little books for hire called How to Talk to Your Teen about . . . . But for the past few months he's been at work on a ghostwriting assignment beyond his dreams. To prepare her "autobiography", he has been interviewing the internationally renowned diva, Mercè Casals. When the Señora dies suddenly—floating sizable in her elegant scented bath—she is suddenly a hot property and a celebrity biographer arrives to take over the writing of her book. But Lockwood realizes this is his one chance at greatness, and so he runs off with the interview tapes. Abetted by the beautiful but scrupulous Perla, the Señora's nurse, and by a female impersonator who considers himself the diva's greatest fan, Lockwood locks himself into his study, endlessly plays the tapes, and begins to craft his greatest book. Once the three conspirators rescue the Señora's husband from the home she put him in, Lockwood's sense of his own heart begins to expand beyond his considerable imagination. Moving by turns through the diva's lyrical account of her life and the frantic pace of Lockwood's notes from underground, The Wonder Singer portrays for us just what it can mean to live a beautiful life to its fullest.