Perfect Reader

Maggie Pouncey's debut novel, "Perfect Reader," tells a strong character-driven story about ordinary people who unexpectedly find themselves sharing the same life crisis:

Flora Dempsey, 28 years old, has been called back to Darwin to deal with the sudden death of her father, Lewis, a retired college president who was still very much a presence in this small college town right up to the day of his death. Cynthia is the lover Lewis Dempsey left behind, a teacher still employed by Dempsey's old school, and someone whose very existence comes as a shock to Flora. Cynthia had hoped to spend the rest of her life with Dempsey - but now he is gone. Joan is Flora's mother, the woman who divorced Lewis Dempsey almost two decades earlier precisely show more because she could not stand playing the "president's wife" role assigned to her by small-town academia - and who is still angry that her ex-husband ever had the nerve to expect her to fill that role.

Flora is an unhappy young woman. She is not satisfied with her life in the big city, including the magazine job that makes that life possible, so she is almost eager to walk away from it all to begin a new one in the house she has inherited from her father. When she meets her father's lawyer, a man whom she sees as a potential lover of her own, Flora learns she has inherited more than just the assets her father left behind. She has also inherited the obligation of serving as his literary executor and now she will have to decide whether the poems her father entrusted to her care will ever be published.

By entrusting his daughter with his final work, Lewis Dempsey may have been hoping to find his own "perfect reader," that person who would read his poems exactly as he intended them to be read, with complete understanding of their message and source. Realistically, such a thing is near impossible to achieve and, in the case of the Lewis Dempsey and his daughter, their complicated relationship will doom it from the start.

Flora will spend much of her time in Darwin, a town she feels is "three hours from everywhere," being reminded of her unhappy childhood there. Pouncey skillfully interweaves stories from Flora's childhood about sharing time with both parents after the divorce, and about a devastating incident involving her best friend, with the current day experiences that trigger those memories. In the year-long process, Flora will learn as much about her own life as she does about her father's and about the woman she has come to see as such a rival to her father's memory.

"Perfect Reader" will particularly appeal to those readers who enjoy delving deeply into the heads of a novel's characters and those with an interest in the inner workings of a small town college. This one is not long on action or plot twists, but it leaves the reader with plenty to think about.

Rated at: 4.0 show less

This first novel kind of sputters into life about halfway through, only to peter out again disappointingly at the end. The main character is prickly and hard to get a handle on, but overall I would say that the character and the writing both reward patience. Pouncey's style is dryly humorous and she adroitly delineates the pleasures and pitfalls of life in a small college town. I happen to have lived in the area in which the fictional town and college of Darwin are set, and Pouncey's observations made me laugh out loud with recognition more than once.

Maggie Pouncey's debut novel left me wishing I could rate it higher than three stars, because she's clearly a good writer and the novel did keep me interested. But therein is the flaw for me; I was interested, but not really affected by, the story.

The strengths of the novel include Pouncey's descriptive prose (although, it could have done with fewer run-on sentences). She skillfully brings to life the atmosphere of a small New England college town. It was easy to get immersed in the setting and she brought the world of liberal academia to life. I could picture the streets of Darwin, and the coziness of Flora's father's living room.

One of the main weaknesses was character development. Flora, the main character, was interesting but too show more often just plain unlikeable. Pouncey shows how her childhood and, of course, her current state of grief contribute to her state of unhappiness. But there were too many times that I cringed at her cruel behavior and the "excuses" of her past began to feel tiresome. The novel does a good job of capturing the unsettling experience of trying to figure out one's direction in life, but Flora's reactions at times are just uncalled for. Flora had some genuinely vulnerable and funny moments that made her more likeable, I just wish there had been more of them.

The ending wrapped up a bit too quickly and neatly, with no real resolution to some of the plotlines and relationships which was a bit unsatisfying. But the writing kept me reading. Perfect Reader didn't quite capture me, but I do think Pouncey is a promising writer and I'd check out her next effort. show less

I really wanted to like this book more than I ultimately did. The writing was intelligent and nuanced, and the storyline, centered as it was around books and reading, was a strong draw. Unfortunately, I found a lot of promise that was never really fulfilled, making for a frustrating read in the end. I never felt emotionally invested in the characters or their lives; for a book with so few personalities, none of them were particularly well-developed except for Flora, and I found her hard to like. The glimpses of Flora's childhood were the most emotionally compelling portion of the narrative, and came too infrequently for my taste.

In the end, I found myself unable to make a connection to these characters. Though the writing was strong, show more the sense of detachment made it possible to walk away from the book without a qualm to do chores or run errands. When I came to the end, I was neither glad to be done nor sad to be finished- I didn't have a viceral enough reaction to the book to care one way or the other. show less

Perfect Reader by Maggie Pouncey

(For review from Pantheon)

Synopsis:

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.

Maggie Pouncey has created an unforgettable charac ter in the young, headstrong, and quick-witted Flora Dempsey, the only child of Lewis Dempsey, beloved former college president and a famous academic in the league of Harold Bloom. On hearing the news of her father’s death, Flora hastily quits her big-city magazine job and returns to her hometown to in habit his house. But even weightier is her appoint ment as her father’s literary executor; it seems he was secretly writing poems at the end of show more his life—love poems, to a girlfriend Flora didn’t even know he had. Suddenly besieged by well-wishers and literary blog gers alike, Flora has no choice but to figure out how to navigate it all: the fate of the poems, her relation ship with the girlfriend who wants a place in her life, her memories of her parents’ divorce, and her own uncertain future.

At once comic and profound, Perfect Reader is a heady, uplifting story of loneliness and of the spur to growth that grief can be. Brimming with life, and with the elbow-patchy wisdom and energy of her still-vivid father, Flora’s story will set her free to be the “perfect reader” not only of her father’s life but of her own life as well.

Thoughts:

Perfect Reader is very well developed for a debut novel. I was really surprised at the in-depth descriptions and superb character development. Pouncey's details about the town where Flora grew up make the reader feel like they are really there and can smell the flowers and see the beautiful tree lined streets.

Flora Dempsey takes more than one journey in this book. From her big city home where she has a job working at a magazine to the streets of her New England childhood home. But, she embarks on another journey to find out more about the father she feels she didn't know very well. He had been writing poems to a woman that Flora knew nothing about and since his death, this girlfriend wants to claim the poems. Flora also takes a journey of self discovery as she processes the grief surrounding her father's death and her return home.

This book has a very uplifting message and shows how people deal with grief differently and the steps that a person goes through as they deal with it. Flora's character goes through a gambit of emotions including joy, as she remembers her father, anger as she deals with the new girlfriend in his life and sadness as she misses him. I thought this was a very good book and I am looking forward to more books from Maggie Pouncey.

Perfect Reader is available now at your favorite bookseller.

I am giving this one 4 out of 5 apples from my book bag! show less

Much of the book was peppered with clever linguistic constructions that I wished some editor had nipped with sharp shears. Having read to the end, I suspect they were purposeful. Overall, a really enjoyable read. Recommended for anyone who's been either town or gown (happily or not so happily) at a private college, or any English major who's dealt with the -Anxiety of Influence- or the New Criticism/Poststructuralism divide.

Flora returns to the small college town of Darwin after the sudden death of her father, the college's former president and a renowned academic. Finding that she's her father's literary executor poses the problem of what to do with the poems he gave her before he died--poems she hasn't even read.

Perfect Reader is début literary fiction, and it's a promising beginning to Maggie Pouncey's career. It's a thoughtful, slow revealing of layers of the past, both Flora's childhood and her father's recent past, about aspects of which Flora realizes she knew nothing.

Flora needs to confront her past in order to move on with her present, which has been going nowhere. It's a familiar story arc in many ways, right down to the inevitable love affair show more which moves Flora onwards but doesn't really come to anything in itself. But it's well written and nicely structured, and will appeal to fans of books that don't rush from one incident to another but linger over a place, a time, a mood.

I enjoyed reading this novel and will look out for more from this author. show less