Misconception: A Novel - Softcover

Boudinot, Ryan

3.06

251 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080217065X ISBN 13: 9780802170651

Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat, 2009

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Cedar Rivers is on a strange errand. A doctor sidelined into the strange world of the first dot-com boom, he has come to Albany, New York, in between business in Iceland and home in Silicon Valley, to meet a woman he hasn’t seen in twenty years. Then a Chuck Taylor shod proto-Goth with chipped black nail polish, Kat is now a literary up-and-comer who needs Cedar to vet her memoir an account of the summer they were sweethearts. As if that weren’t enough, she’s written parts of it from his point of view. Through an intense weekend in a snowed-in motel room, Cedar and Kat relive their most painful memories: Before they had a chance at first love, Kat’s mother and her new fianc� dragged Kat off on a family trip. Kat returned with a secret, one which when she shared it with Cedar set off a series of drastically miscalculated assumptions that dominoed into a moment of startling tragedy. Misconception is a startlingly original debut novel a smart and provocative coming-of-age story, and a fresh and witty comment on the unreliability of memory and storytelling that establishes Ryan Boudinot as one of the most promising talents of his generation.

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Review:

"Misconception takes on the question of truth in storytelling, as well as matters of the heart, and the mysteries of coming into one's own, all with a sensitivity and intelligence that is truly moving, and a sense of humor that, page after page, will warm your cockles. A gem of a first novel." -- Charles Bock

"A comic symphony--a story with side-splitting action, treacherous wit, and vise-grip lyricism . . . Here, bleak is beautiful, and lucid, lovable characters jump into your arms. Misconception gives fresh voice to our most important American secrets." -- Maria Flook

"Ryan Boudinot's tragic narrators, Cedar and Kat, deliver a rollicking tour of adolescence that pivots on a gasp. Misconception is as twisted as watching your own sperm swim under the microscope in biology class and as irresistible as a twenty-year secret about sex, death, and paternity." -- Aimee Liu

"Ryan Boudinot will make you love characters even when they are being despicable and foolish, and he writes about relationships in a way that is perceptive, honest, and refreshing. But there is something more going on. Misconception is a book riven with insight, humor, and style. And it is among the finest debuts I have ever read." -- Stephen Elliott

From Publishers Weekly:

A breezy, humorous first novel from Boudinot (after his collection, The Littlest Hitler) chronicles the awkward coming-of-age of a boy whose middle-school crush entwines him into the girl's dysfunctional family. Cedar Rivers is first introduced when he brings in his own semen for inspection under the microscope in eighth-grade science class, a stunt that impresses incipient beauty Kat Daniels. Groping summer sexual experiments ensue and are cut short as Kat has to spend a month traveling with her mom and her mom's creepy new boyfriend, George. When Kat returns pregnant, George is the assumed suspect. Boudinot is not overly concerned by this flimsy plot, managing to inject textual interest by alternating the narrative in the voices of first Cedar then Kat, whom Cedar meets with 20 years later to sign a waiver regarding the memoir she's about to publish. There are ironic, tongue-in-cheek moments (Ryan Boudinot is the name of a critic who reviewed Kat's first book), perhaps to remind the reader not to take any of this too seriously—especially the over-the-top ending—while Boudinot provides moments of gossamer prose. (Sept.)
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