Maybe my favorite book of all time. Lorrie Moore says everything that we're all thinking - much better, much funnier than any of us could say it (let's be real). Anagrams gives us Benna and Gerard, two people who sometimes mean everything to each other and sometimes mean nothing at all. At one point in the book, this is what they mean to each other: "On the community school's application form where it had asked 'Are you married?' (this was optional information), I had written an emphatic 'No' and next to it, where it asked 'To whom?' I'd written ' A guy named Gerard.'"
A revelatory tale of love gained and lost—from a master of contemporary American fiction. • "An extraordinary, often hilarious novel." —The New York Times Book Review
Gerard sits, fully clothed, in his empty bathtub and pines for Benna. Neighbors in the same apartment building, they share a wall and Gerard listens for the sound of her toilet flushing. Gerard loves Benna. And then Benna loves Gerard. She listens to him play piano, she teaches poetry and sings at nightclubs. As their relationships ebbs and flows, through reality and imagination, Lorrie Moore paints a captivating, innovative portrait of men and women in love and not in love.
About the Author
LORRIE MOORE is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for her achievement in the short story. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Praise For…
"An extraordinary, often hilarious novel." —The New York Times Book Review
"From the very start, Lorrie Moore's generous gifts as a writer have been clear: A wry, distinctive voice, a gift for telling detail." —The New York Times
“Anagrams has all the wit and inveigling playfulness of Self-Help, plus an organic sophistication astounding in a first novel.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
"A rare novel. . . . Its surface sparkles with wit and humor, but underneath there's a keen intelligence at work, a seriousness of purpose that's deeply touching. Read Anagrams. It will bowl you over." —The Plain Dealer
