Duchess of Nothing

After leaving her husband and her suffocating marriage for the romance and promise of Rome, the narrator of Duchess of Nothing has her freedom but is still trapped by the routine of life and haunted by her past. Charming, manic, and acutely aware of her own precarious grasp on the world around her, the narrator speaks with a kind of absurd logic that makes the book impossible to put down. Heather McGowan is the author of the novel Schooling, which was listed as a Best Book of the Year by Newsweek, the Detroit Free Press, and the Hartford Courant. She lives in Brooklyn. PRAISE : "Strange and startling...beautiful and jagged, immensely comic and oddly moving."-People "Part Holly Golightly, part Auntie Mame, part Eloise all growed up...this woman without a name is so marvelous, so wise and ditzy, so committed to the pure spirit of this abandoned boy that you cannot help but fall utterly in love with her."-Los Angeles Times "An engrossing, entertaining book...[McGowan] beautifully characterizes her unnamed protagonist in a voice that is by turns tragic, farcical, pathetic, poignant and hilarious."-San Francisco Chronicle "Imagine Mary Poppins with a heavy dose of Sylvia Plath...[the book has] a sneaky irresistible charm."-New York Times Book Review "If you took one of Dostoevsky's existentially rebellious characters and spliced in the kind of eloquent quirkiness you'd find in Oscar Wilde, you might approximate this oddball individual invented by McGowan...the narrator of Duchess of Nothing is truly an extraordinary character."-Newsday "Duchess of Nothing recalls Robert Browning's wonderful dramatic monologues of the 19th century. McGowan writes sharp, observant prose."-Seattle Times Also available: HC 1-59691-066-6 ISBN-13 978-1-59691-066-9 $23.95 You must get to this book...Read it. Wonder. Marvel. McGowan is a stylist with few peers. You will quote sentences for the rest of your days.-Detroit Free Press