Pretend Im Dead, Jen Beagin
Pretend Im Dead, Jen Beagin
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Pretend I'm Dead

Author: Jen Beagin

Narrator: Candace Thaxton

Unabridged: 7 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/15/2018


Synopsis

NAMED A BEST BOOK of the YEAR by O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE, REFINERY 29, and KIRKUS REVIEWS
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE

The “wondrous” (O, The Oprah Magazine), “scathingly funny” (Entertainment Weekly) debut from Whiting Award winner and author of Big Swiss Jen Beagin about a cleaning lady named Mona and her quest for self-acceptance.

Jen Beagin’s funny, moving, fearless debut novel introduces an unforgettable character, Mona—almost twenty-four, emotionally adrift, and cleaning houses to get by. She falls for a man she calls Mr. Disgusting, who proceeds to break her heart in unimaginable ways.

In search of healing, she decamps to Taos, New Mexico, for a fresh start, where she finds a community of cast-offs, all of whom have something to teach her—the pajama-wearing, blissed-out New Agers, the slightly creepy client with peculiar tastes in controlled substances, the psychic who might really be psychic. But always lurking just beneath the surface are her memories of growing up in a chaotic, destructive family from which she’s trying to disentangle herself, and the larger legacy of the past.

The story of Mona’s quest for belonging in this world is at once hilarious and wonderfully strange, true to life and boldly human, and introduces a stunning, one-of-a-kind new voice in American fiction.

About Jen Beagin

Jen Beagin holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine, and is a recipient of a Whiting Award in fiction. Her first novel Pretend I’m Dead was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and Vacuum in the Dark was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction. She is also the author of Big Swiss. She lives in Hudson, New York.


Reviews

Goodreads review by leah on June 07, 2023

4.5 after reading and loving jen beagin's most recently published novel big swiss back in february, i knew i had to read her other work. pretend i'm dead is beagin’s debut, and similarly to big swiss, it is funny, dry, grotesque, and very dark - although the weird sense of humour and beagin’s eccentr......more

Goodreads review by Bandit on February 19, 2018

This was a strange sort of attraction at first sight (the title alone is so intriguing) negotiated down by reluctance to engage with a 24 year old protagonist. Yes, I know, I’m an ageist, but can you blame me? This generation has been just all sorts of unattractive. Although I’m very glad to have fi......more

Goodreads review by Jason on March 17, 2016

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) Any book that starts with a young volunteer at a needle exchange developing a crush on one of her junkie cl......more

Goodreads review by Richard on August 06, 2018

A lot of my dissatisfaction with this book is the disconnect between how it's being sold - a quirky tale of new beginnings - and what it is - a dark look at the scars of childhood abuse. Most of the time, I'd just shrug off the marketing and try to judge a book on its own merits, but this time I end......more