Fabulous Fiction Firsts #561 - "How strange life is, how fickle! How little is needed to ruin or to save!” ~ Guy de Maupassant

Fri, 10/23/2015 - 7:18pm by muffy

The buzz has been overwhelming since the publication of The Clasp by essayist/humorist Sloane Crosley this month. (Check out the New York Times Review). "Part comedy of manners, part treasure hunt, the first novel from the writer whom David Sedaris calls 'perfectly, relentlessly funny'."

A wedding on a private island brings college friends Kezia, Nathaniel, and Victor together. Though their grown-up lives have gone dramatically off-course, resembling nothing like their aspirations, they easily slip back into old roles - Victor loves Kezia. Kezia loves Nathaniel. Nathaniel loves Nathaniel.

When Victor passes out in the mother of the groom's bedroom, he wakes to find himseslf the recipient of a strange story about a valuable necklace that disappeared during the Nazi occupation of France. And so a madcap adventure is set into motion - one that leads Victor, Kezia, and Nathaniel from Miami to New York and L.A. to Paris and across France, until they converge at the estate of Guy de Maupassant, author of the classic short story The Necklace.

"Crosley's smart, sardonic, sometimes-zany, yet also sensitive story is told from the alternating perspectives of these three linked characters, taking the readers along as they reunite... in pursuit of, yes, a priceless necklace but also of things far more valuable: the truth about themselves and one another, a genuine sense of purpose... and, perhaps most precious of all, a connection to one another."

For fans of Maggie Shipstead's Seating Arrangements; and Ayelet Waldman's Love & Treasure. Reading Group Guide included.