- Paperback: 225 pages
- Published: 7/1/10
- IBSN: 9781936070084
- e-IBSN: 9781936070848
- Genre: Fiction
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Mesopotamia
A stand-alone satiric thriller from New York City literary icon Arthur Nersesian.
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What people are saying…
“Nersesian easily captures the quirks of Tennessee, from sweet mom-and-pop storefronts to dingy, cluttered trailer parks; he sounds eager to stretch those regional muscles, after eight novels set in caustic New York . . . Mesopotamia is a solid, absurdist mystery. It’s a vacation from the cosmopolitan, for both its heroine and its author—and, just like the tabloids it skewers, a sensationalist retreat for the reader.”
—Village Voice
“This wild and wildly entertaining novel [is] a satirical thriller with a tabloid touch that revels in the low-rent colorfulness of its characters.”
—Library Journal
“The immortal shadow of Elvis Presley gyrates wildly through this satiric exploration of America’s fascination with tabloid journalism.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Thoroughly entertaining . . . A quirky, hard-edged, slightly absurdist thriller from a writer who definitely bears watching.”
—Booklist
Praise for Arthur Nersesian:
“In his paean to the perplexities of dislocation and discovery—both in bohemian life and in life at large—Nersesian makes us eager to see what happens when the curtain finally rises.”
—New York Times Book Review, on Unlubricated
“The charm and grit of Nersesian’s voice is immediately enveloping.”
—Village Voice
“Arthur Nersesian is this generation’s Mark Twain and the East River is his Mississippi.”
—Jennifer Belle, author of High Maintenance
Description
Read “SHARD,” Arthur Nersesian’s contribution to Akashic’s Mondays Are Murder series.
Things have not been going well for journalist Sandy Bloomgarten. Her job went down the drain and her marriage quickly followed. After a lengthy bender, she awakens one morning to the stark realization that she is flat broke. Nonetheless, she’s still a crack reporter and when a tabloid offers her a freelance assignment in Memphis, just a stone’s throw from her childhood home in Mesopotamia, Tennessee, she takes it.
Though sent there for one story, she winds up tracking down another: someone is killing Elvis impersonators who perform at the annual Sing-the-King festival. The few clues lead her to several unlikely characters: a cheating local minister constantly on the make; a strange band of misfits who only cover Elvis tunes; a small-town private eye who blew himself up along with his crystal meth lab. As Sandy’s investigation closes, she realizes that she is sitting on what could be the story of the century. The only problem is she can never reveal what she has found.
Nersesian’s latest novel, set largely in Tennessee, is a satiric thriller that takes an amusing view of America’s predilection with the superficial over the relevant, and celebrity excitement over real news.
- Subjects: Literary Fiction
- Tags: Arthur Nersesian, East Village, New York City, Tennessee
Book Details
Author
ARTHUR NERSESIAN is the author of fourteen books, including the cult-classic national best seller The Fuck-Up (more than 100,000 copies sold), Suicide Casanova, Manhattan Loverboy, East Village Tetralogy, and Mesopotamia. He is a native New Yorker who runs a writing workshop in the East Village and can be reached on Facebook. His latest work is The Five Books of (Robert) Moses.