Exquisite Mariposa, Fiona Alison Duncan
Exquisite Mariposa, Fiona Alison Duncan
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Exquisite Mariposa
A Novel

Author: Fiona Alison Duncan

Narrator: Natasha Soudek

Unabridged: 5 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/01/2019

Synopsis

Given the initials F.A.D. at birth, Fiona Alison Duncan has always had an eye for observing the trends around her. But after years of trying to please others, looking for answers in books and astrological charts, and clocking endless hours as a celebrity journalist just to make rent, Fiona discovers another way of existing: in the Real, a phenomenological state few humans live in.Fiona’s journey to the Real takes her to Koreatown, Los Angeles, where she sublets a room in La Mariposa. There she meets a cast of friends and lovers, like Amalia, an artist whose muse is her pet pigeon; Lucien, an infamous philanderer; and Morgan, whose anxiety keeps her from ever sitting still. When Fiona is offered the chance to turn her new household into a reality TV show, she jumps at the opportunity―but it isn’t long before she begins to question this new script.In the midst of her Saturn Return, Fiona pulls the plug on the reality TV deal, heals a few addictions, and returns to writing with Exquisite Mariposa, a debut novel starring her housemates as they ask questions of survival, art, love, language, and the possibilities of rewriting one’s life.

About Fiona Alison Duncan

Fiona Alison Duncan is a Canadian American artist, writer, and organizer. She’s the founding host of Hard to Read, a lit series, and Pillow Talk, community organizing on sex, love, and communication. She lives in New York and Los Angeles.

About Natasha Soudek

If you've watched TV at all in the past ten years, you've definitely seen her face and heard her voice countless times in any number of wildly successful national, global, and Super Bowl commercials, as well as playing the first blond Vulcan in Star Trek history. The daughter of two English professors, Natasha Soudek was raised in the South, speaks native German, lived in Berlin and Vienna, and finally settled in the Lower East Side of New York City as a teenager. After honing her stage presence by studying acting and playing hundreds of sold-out live music shows (singing and playing bass), she moved to LA to record with Channel/DreamWorks and act on TV. Favored on KCRW, Chris Douridas compared her voice and songwriting to the Beatles' Let it Be in meaning and soulfulness . . . qualities that translate especially well into her career as an audiobook narrator. Her voice is as distinct and memorable as the range of characters she's played on-screen, which gives listeners an immediate familiarity to connect to, along with a warmth and intimacy that spans and uplifts any genre.

Reviews

Goodreads review by nathan on December 07, 2023

READING VLOG The epitome of girl dinner. It screams fridge of little plastic cups of fat-free yoplait sitting on one shelf and a raw-dogged gua sha on another. Maybe half a block of cheese. A half-drunken Erewhon smoothie. For every lost twentysomething girl in Los Angeles, this has your name written......more

Goodreads review by Dorrit on November 29, 2019

Cats are evil, too, and I love them. So maybe it’s okay that I am what I am. We’re predators, daydreamers, slinky, dethroned royalty, cuddly only when we say.......more

Goodreads review by Soft Skull on November 01, 2019

In the aftermath of a reality TV deal gone wrong, Fiona Alison Duncan asks the question, Can you rewrite your life? The answer, her debut novel Exquisite Mariposa, follows a cast of housemates as they navigate questions of art making and economies, breakups and breakdowns, and the internet and its m......more

Goodreads review by Marina on March 18, 2020

If Eve Babtiz was a hipster Gwyneth Paltrow......more

Goodreads review by asia on November 02, 2022

you ever read a book where it is so apparent that twitter has so deeply imbedded itself into the gray folds of the authors brain that every sentence comes out self-centered and unoriginal? what if red scare podcast was a novel. what if the thirty-something leisure-creative class failsons and faildau......more

Quotes

“Wordplay and sonic games abound.” New Yorker

“Exquisite Mariposa knows the seduction of stars (celebrities) and stars (celestial).” Los Angeles Review of Books

“A funny, thought-provoking novel that levels pointed critiques at gender and class inequality and captures what it’s like to be a young person today.” Foreword Reviews

“A splendidly weird and comforting debut novel about the costs of living happily in a society overrun with demoralizing demands.” Paperback Paris

“An original, insightful debut that doesn’t quite fit in a box—but checks them all.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Exquisite Mariposa is one of those books that had me from the first sentence to the last and beyond. Duncan churns up all the digital, performative, hypersocial chaos of our present ‘reality,’ even of the near future, and crystallizes it into dreamy and raw poetry. Page after page, paragraph after paragraph, this story, built on jewel-like insights, sometimes made me laugh and sometimes made me sad and always registered as true.” Jardine Libaire, author of White Fur

“Ecstatic and painful, Exquisite Mariposa is a diligent search for the heart of The Real, taking its place alongside the great Young Girl books of becoming, from Mary McCarthy’s The Company She Keeps to Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends. To Duncan, The Real equals self-knowledge, compassion, perception. She is a genius and I’d follow her anywhere.” Chris Kraus, author of After Kathy Acker

“An unapologetically raw account of coming of age broke in Trump-era Los Angeles in the social media–saturated Now, this meditation (almost manifesto?) on materialism, media, power, performance, and sexuality uses inventive, of-the-moment language to tackle that circuitous route to self-discovery that is your twenties—in a startlingly original way.” Lilibet Snellings, author of Box Girl: My Part Time Job As an Art Installation

Awards

  • Lambda Literary Award
  • Nylon Magazine Pick
  • Millions.com Pick
  • High Country News Pick
  • Northern California Book Award
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