The Stager
A Novel
-
-
3.0 • 4 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
The Stager is a comedy of rabbits and real estate in the D.C. suburbs from Susan Coll, the author of Acceptance and Beach Week
Dominique is one very bitter rabbit. His owner, Lars Jorgenson, is a former tennis pro who has blown out both knees, become obese, and is now addicted to a cocktail of prescription drugs containing the letters X and Z, one weird side-effect of which is that he has developed an omniscient point of view. Both Dominique and Lars are going crazy in the affluent Maryland suburbs where their faux Tudor home is up for sale. Idle on the market for months, the home is now being staged: A professional has come in to redecorate and depersonalize the house so that others can imagine themselves living there. Into the messy personal life of Lars and his beautiful wife Bella comes Eve, an unemployed journalist-turned stager who immediately realizes, as she steps into the foyer, that she is in the home of her former best friend. Eve knows way too much about Bella, including the questionable paternity of the meddling young child who lives in this house. Questions of friendship, loyalty, fidelity, sobriety, and sanity are raised to hilarious effect in this dark comedy of how we live now in the age of planned communities, cookie-cutter mansions, and cutthroat careerism.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This attempt by Coll (Acceptance) to satirize life in the affluent suburbs of Washington, D.C., only partially succeeds. The narrative works best when the point of view belongs to Lars Jorgenson, a former tennis star now overweight and overmedicated; his prepubescent daughter, Elsa; and his family's misanthropic missing rabbit, Dominique. Unfortunately, too much space is devoted to Eve, who was once besties with Lars's cheating wife, Bella. Now she has been hired to "stage," or redecorate, the Jorgenson house for a quick sale so the family can move to London, where Bella's new high-powered job as the public face for a multinational corporation and her former lover both await. Coll uses Elsa's youthful, na ve voice to quirkily comic effect. She mines a darker brand of humor from Lars's drugged-out perspective, in which he believes he has become omniscient and can hold conversations with the snarky Dominique, in scenes reminiscent of TV's Wilfred. The book's more wide-ranging satire on the 1% (which includes grace notes such as a high-end, planned hippie commune called the Unfurlings), however, goes underdeveloped thanks to the excessive time spent on Bella and Eve's backstory.
