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Vendor
Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik
Original language
English
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DON'T I KNOW YOU?

Marni Jackson

Don't I Know You? is a groundbreaking novel in stories that explores our complicated relationship to fame. Unputdownable, by turns deliciously fun and poignant, Marni Jackson's debut takes a world obsessed with celebrities and turns it on its head. For readers of Ben Lerner, Maria Semple and Karl Ove Knausgaard (who also makes a surprise appearance in the book), Don't I Know You? is a powerful exploration of our curiously intimate relationship to stars.
What would happen if some of the artists we love —Neil Young, Meryl Streep, Keith Richards, Bill Murray —turned up in the course of our daily lives: on the bus. At the cottage. Or on the operating table?

This is what happens to Rose McEwan, a journalist and middling author of thrillers who keeps having strange encounters with famous people. The novel follows her life from age 16 (when she attends a writing workshop led by a young but already philandering John Updike) through heartbroken bohemia (Joni Mitchell offers timely advice), a doomed marriage, and a cheerful post-divorce renaissance in her sixties when she embarks on a wilderness canoe trip in Canada with Taylor Swift, Leonard Cohen, and Karl Ove.

With wit, insight and impressive craft, Don't I Know You? reflects a culture in which stars have invaded our psyches. Although based in fact and cast with familiar names, these stories are all inventions— just as celebrity itself is a form of fiction. As Marni Jackson writes, “Stars can only exist at the point where their public roles and our imaginations meet. They may do the work, but we're the ones who author their fame.”

Marni Jackson has published in Rolling Stone and London Sunday Times and is best known for her bestselling nonfiction in Canada, where she has won numerous National Magazine Awards for her journalism, humor and social commentary. She has been a book columnist for The Globe and Mail, and a senior editor at The Walrus. Don't I Know You? is her first work of fiction.
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Published 2016-09-01 by Flat Iron Books

Comments

"Such a premise could easily fall flat. But with Jackson at the helm it is nothing short of brilliant."

“Jackson's writing is so smooth that it all feels real; anything seems possible. Our relationship with celebrities is a complicated business. We don't really know them, but we feel like we do because of the way we interact with their art and the way their art interacts with big moments in our lives. Jackson helps to make sense of this by bringing celebrities into the fold of daily life. The result is magic.”

Bompiani

"Don't I Know You? reframes our fascination with famous strangers, which can be as flippant as paging through Us Weekly in the checkout line or as passionate as a desperate teenage crush. In Jackson's hands, that fascination is a kind of creativity—even a kind of art."

Berla & Griffini

"...the author's uncommon device - the mixture of fiction and non-fiction revolving around real life celebrity - works. Jackson's characters, real and purely fictional, ring true."

"Blending a fictional life story with real-life celebrity cameos, the story has a lot to say about how we see famous people, what we expect of them, and also what we expect of and how we see ourselves."

"Whimsical and imaginative, Jackson's book is a commentary on the modern-day, ultra-famous artist and his or her role in our everyday lives."