Elsa is the final psychological portrait in Keller’s trilogy (after Maggie in Jackpot, and Sally in Retelling). In this novel, Elsa—and the reader along with her—is caught in a labyrinth of deceit and obsession. Her fears become ours as she questions and doubts them with escalating intensity.    Fusing Patricia Highsmith’s gift for sociopathic portraits with Jean Rhys’s woman-in-a-jam claustrophobia, the first two novels of Tsipi Keller’s trilogy-in-progress offer front-row views of obsessive characters who somehow manage to be scary and wildly engaging at the same time.     Michael Miller (TimeOut)  From Publishers Weekly (on Retelling) The mystery of who butchered ethereally beautiful and pregnant Elsbeth is at the heart of Keller’s elegant and spooky second novel … Keller flirts with the answer as her novel slips back and forth through time to depict tantalizing glimpses of possible truths filtered through Sally’s uncertain memories … This opaque yet beguiling novel showcases the work of a talented and original writer.    From Publishers Weekly (on Jackpot) A Bahamian vacation turns into a nightmarish dreamworld in Tsipi Keller’s smart, sly Jackpot ... Keller expertly charts Maggie’s transformation in this accomplished and oddly gripping novel.

Elsa

Literature & Fiction

Keller, Tsipi

Genre Fiction

Spuyten Duyvil Publishing

Jackpot is part of a trilogy, a psychological triptych that takes on the moral and social conflicts women often face in contemporary American life. Jackpot is the first novel to tell the story of a female casino gambler. In her pursuit of success and the good life, Maggie, the 26-year old protagonist, pivots on a fulcrum of despair as she struggles to gain entry into the world of the powerful and brutal. Abandoned by her elusive friend, Robin, Maggie succumbs to ultimate self-abnegation in the false paradise of a Caribbean resort, while her intelligence grasps all too clearly the ever-closing trap.

Jackpot

United States

Spuyten Duyvil

A literary love story. In this literary love story, Marcus Weiss, a loyal denizen of New York City, retires at age fifty to work on a dictionary he has grandly titled “The Human Gesture in Western Literature.” Comparing himself to Flaubert, who read fifteen hundred books in order to compose his Bouvard and Pécuchet—Marcus immerses himself in literature, culling quotations and passages for his dictionary and treating his friends to impromptu readings of the “pearls” he finds, all the while lecturing them about the emptiness and futility of consumerism. His lover, Gina, and his best friend, Oscar, do their best to indulge him, but when they’ve had enough, they poke fun at this modern-day “prophet.” One day, while Marcus is at work in his warm and secluded study, an old man invades his imagination, and Marcus, enchanted, allows the old man entry and begins to write his biography. Soon, time distinctions blur: does Marcus, as he looks far into the future, imagine himself as an old man, living alone with his books, or is the old man the actual Marcus, now eighty years old, looking back and recounting a time in his life when his dear ones—Gina, Oscar, and all his other contemporaries—were still living? “In this haunting novel, Marcus Weiss is trapped in the legacy of the Holocaust and the presence of anti-Semitism. Writing a novel, and compiling a dictionary, he seeks to capture the totality of experience. The silences of the book, and Marcus’s own collections of quotations, are eloquent and memorable.” — Lew Fried, Kent State University “In elegant, pitch-perfect prose, Tsipi Keller explores what it means to be a writer in a post-Holocaust world. Her evocation of Marcus Weiss—at once tender and wise—lays bare the felt life of the novelist. Along the way, Keller pays honor to the human experience and to the artful language that gives us our measure.” — Andrew Furman, author of Israel Through the Jewish-American Imagination: A Survey of Jewish-American Literature on Israel, 1928–1995 “Marcus Weiss preaches the love of literature in a wilderness where people don’t read. Moreover, he is a writer. He is writing a book about himself writing, and about his lover and his friends, who wonder if they’ll appear in his book. He exhorts them to read books that matter, that make us more human, that make the mind dance. And the marvelous thing is that the book he is writing, which is the one we are reading, is just such a book, because Marcus is generous, opinionated, foolish, and inspired, not merely a creature of words and paper. I’m sure he would add Tsipi Keller to his list of favorite authors if he knew her.” — Joel Agee, author of Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany

The Prophet of Tenth Street: A Novel (Excelsior Editions)

Literary

State University of New York Press

The mystery of who butchered ethereally beautiful and pregnant Elsbeth is at the heart of Keller's elegant and spooky second novel (part of a trilogy, after Jackpot). Was it the traumatized and fragile narrator, Sally, whose friendship with the dead woman verged on the obsessive? Or was it Elsbeth's arrogant and demanding boyfriend, Drew, who resented Sally's relationship with her? Keller flirts with the answer as her novel slips back and forth through time to depict tantalizing glimpses of possible truths filtered through Sally's uncertain memories. As her emotions unravel, Sally finds solace in the gentlemen who play chess in the park where she breakfasts, and maintains, however fitfully, an uneasy reliance on Lydia, a self-centered and mean-spirited friend who thinks Sally is better off with Elsbeth dead. The police, bent on extracting a confession from Sally, harangue her during increasingly abusive interrogation sessions that provide her a forum for creepily pondering her (questionable) innocence. This opaque yet beguiling novel showcases the work of a talented and original writer. (July) Copyright (c) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Retelling

Contemporary

Annette, soon to turn thirty, has been transplanted from New York City to a small college town where her husband has been hired to teach rich girls "the basic tenets of History and Culture." The girls have arrived from all over the country with their horses, and Annette wonders how the seemingly spoiled girls manage their busy daily schedules, but they do, they seem to thrive in the fresh air of intellectual and physical pursuits, while Annette, not much older than the girls, feels she has become something she never imagined was possible. One morning, reaching for the notebook where she writes down emergency numbers and To Do lists, Annette, as if compelled, begins to write two diaries, one she titles Squabble Diary, and the other, Love Diary, or, more precisely, Sex Diary, in which she will dutifully record the times her husband (whom she names "Monsieur") deigns to acknowledge her and her needs. At some point, the two diaries become one, and what began as an exercise in futility, and as an uncertainty--will she keep at it--becomes a habit, and "this notebook is filled with words, feelings, stories, historical events, and me." Back in New York and on her own, Annette, adjusting to her new situation, summons the Arabic proverb: yom asal, yom basal--one day honey, one day onion--telling herself she must be strong and keep in mind E. Graham Howe's wise advice: "It is better, if we can, to stand alone and to feel quite normal about our abnormality."

And Yes She Was

Unsolicited Press