You're Not You: A Novel

College student Bec is dangerously adrift. Self-conscious and increasingly uncertain about her long-term plans, she’s studying a major that no longer interests her and is caught up in a bewildering affair with a married professor. In an impulsive attempt to redeem herself, she answers a want ad seeking a caregiver. What she finds is a wealthy, cultivated woman in her midthirties. Once an advertising executive, accomplished chef, and skilled decorator, Kate is now in the advanced stages of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). She and her husband, Evan, handle their situation with mordant humor, careful planning, and a lot of determination. Yet while Bec perceives the couple as charmingly frank and good-humored, strains exist beneath the surface. Bec is soon a vital part of her employer’s household, and their increasing closeness transforms both women’s lives and their relationships. The more she acts on Kate’s behalf, the further Bec strays from her stringent comfort zone. She performs every task, from the most administrative to the most intimate, and she translates Kate’s speech for strangers, friends, and even family. Sometimes enthusiastically, sometimes reluctantly, Bec advances further and further into Kate’s world, surprised by her own increasing dedication and ease. But how closely can Bec intertwine her own life with Kate’s? The two confront their obstacles unsentimentally, with dark humor and unflinching candor, as their relationship is slowly stripped of pretense. Honesty becomes their touchstone: They may find humor in the most devastating moments, but they won’t pretend to believe in silver linings that don’t exist. With crystal clarity, debut author Michelle Wildgen has crafted a deeply affecting novel about the singular relationship between two women, balancing humor and regret, sensuality and necessity, and testing the outer limits of friendship. Advance Praise for You’re Not You “Michelle Wildgen’s novel You Are Not You is so skillfully rendered that it’s hard to believe it is a first novel. The character of Bec, a twentysomething who has a habit of falling into things---jobs, love affairs---is funny, completely unsentimental, and really great for a reader to hang around with. Her worldview and how it changes when she goes to work for Kate, a refined woman in her thirties, is riveting. I simply couldn’t put this book down.” ---Whitney Otto, author of How to Make an American Quilt “What an enjoyable and deeply satisfying novel. In You’re Not You, Michelle Wildgen manages to capture, in some extraordinary way, what it’s like to be a fairly ordinary college student, waiting for one’s life to begin. Bec is a wonderfully complex heroine, and the nuances of her relations with the remarkable Kate are both vivid and suspenseful. This is an exhilarating debut.” ---Margot Livesey, author of Banishing Verona “With You’re Not You, Michelle Wildgen has produced an artful and slyly seductive debut novel about a caregiver in full thrall to her charge’s steely hold on sensuality, taste, and grace.” ---Helen Schulman, author of P.S. “Michelle Wildgen writes with a lush, fierce clarity about the most private and complex of matters: the relationship between identity and intimacy, the body’s pleasures and profound betrayals, the sharp impact of loss, and the gifts of deep attachment. You’re Not You is startling and smart, a wise, beautiful novel.” ---Nancy Reisman, author of The First Desire

Literature & Fiction

Wildgen, Michelle

United States

Thomas Dunne Books

Soon to be a major motion picture directed by George C. Wolfe, produced by Denise Di Novi and starring Hilary Swank, Josh Duhamel and Emmy Rossum
Bec is adrift. It's the summer before her junior year in college. She's sleeping with a married professor, losing interest in her classes, and equivocating about her career. She takes a job caring for Kate, a thirty-six-year-old woman who has been immobilized by ALS.
As it turns out, before the disease Kate was a stylish and commanding woman, an advertising executive and an accomplished chef. Now, as she and Bec spend long days together, Bec begins to absorb Kate's sophistication and her sensuality, cooking for her, sharing her secrets, and gradually beginning to live her own life with a boldness informed by Kate's influence. The more intense her commitment to Kate, the further Bec strays from the complacency of her college life. And when Kate's marriage veers into dangerous territory, Bec will have to choose between the values of her old life and the allure of an entirely new one.

Picador

Hard-shelled, career-minded Greta is the newest and least likely member of a sustainable foods cooperative house in Madison, Wisconsin. Shortly after she joins Karin and Hal in their stately residence near campus, the husband Greta left appears on their porch, drunk, and the reason for her sudden appearance becomes clear. Yet the house members already have plenty to occupy them: a series of summer blackouts has unearthed a disquietude lurking just under the surface for each of the three residents. Gas is dwindling, electricity is unreliable, and the natural world around them is in upheaval. The uneasiness of the environ ment mirrors that of Greta, Hal, and Karin as they each make efforts to resolve their own personal crises. With subtle attunement to the hovering uncertainty affecting each of her characters, Wildgen crafts a story both terrifying and beautiful.

But Not for Long

Greta has left her old life behind and moved into a sustainable foods co-op in Madison, Wisconsin. Just as she begins to settle in with her two housemates, the husband she left behind appears on their porch, drunk. His arrival begins a dark three-day period during which all three residents of the house will have to reckon with a disquietude lurking under the surface of their little society. A series of summer blackouts, gas shortages, and an ominous disappearance will force them all out into a larger world that seems everywhere on the verge of crisis.

But Not for Long: A Novel

Britt and Leo have spent ten years establishing Winesap as the best restaurant in their small Pennsylvania town. They cater to their loyal customers, they don’t sleep with the staff, and business is good, even if their temperamental pastry chef is bored with making the same chocolate cake night after night. But when their dilettante younger brother, Harry, opens his own restaurant, Britt and Leo find their lives thrown off-kilter. Important employees quit and reappear in Harry’s kitchen, their “classic” menu starts to seem overly safe, and romance threatens to bubble up in the most inconvenient of places. As the brothers struggle to find a new family dynamic, Bread and Butter proves to be a dazzling novel that’s as much about siblinghood as it is about the mysterious world behind the kitchen door.

Bread and Butter

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Anchor

Kitchen Confidential meets Three Junes in this mouthwatering novel about three brothers who run competing restaurants, and the culinary snobbery, staff stealing, and secret affairs that unfold in the back of the house. Britt and Leo have spent ten years running Winesap, the best restaurant in their small Pennsylvania town. They cater to their loyal customers; they don't sleep with the staff; and business is good, even if their temperamental pastry chef is bored with making the same chocolate cake night after night. But when their younger brother, Harry, opens his own restaurant—a hip little joint serving an aggressive lamb neck dish—Britt and Leo find their own restaurant thrown off-kilter. Britt becomes fascinated by a customer who arrives night after night, each time with a different dinner companion. Their pastry chef, Hector, quits, only to reappear at Harry's restaurant. And Leo finds himself falling for his executive chef-tempted to break the cardinal rule of restaurant ownership. Filled with hilarious insider detail—the one-upmanship of staff meals before the shift begins, the rivalry between bartender and hostess, the seedy bar where waitstaff and chefs go to drink off their workday—Bread and Butter is both an incisive novel of family and a gleeful romp through the inner workings of restaurant kitchens.

Humor & Satire

DOUBLEDAY

Domestic Realities Europ/h

History

Feld, Werner J.

Europe

Westview Press

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Tin House Magazine: Summer Fiction: Vol. 08, No. 4

Spillman, Rob

MacArthur, Holly

McCormack, Win

Montgomery, Lee

Tin House Magazine

Beautifully designed and showcasing the best of both well-known writers and rising stars, Tin House has pulled out of the pack to gain a reputation as the most important of contemporary literary magazines. Outsider literature, like outsider art and music, has become increasingly popular in our corporatized, consumerist society. The Spring theme issue of Tin House examines this trend in depth. Subtitled Off the Grid,” this special issue includes powerful work by or about people or institutions that function  or don’t  out of the bounds of normal” society. Highlighting a unique kind of raw creativity unmediated by formal training or standard narrative strategies, the issue includes a Lost & Found” section that contains brief appreciations of texts written outside of conventional publishing, writings done in prison and mental institutions, exile and in secret,” and in fantastic realms beyond.

Tin House: Spring Issue 2008: Off the Grid

Contemporary

Tin House is an award-winning literary magazine that publishes new writers as well as more established voices; essays as well as fiction, poetry, and interviews.

Tin House Magazine: Summer Reading 2010: Vol. 11, No. 4

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wildgen, Michelle. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wildgen, Michelle

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wildgen, Michelle. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

You're Not You: A Novel

You're Not You: A Novel

But Not for Long

But Not for Long: A Novel

Bread and Butter

Bread and Butter

Domestic Realities Europ/h

Tin House Magazine: Summer Fiction: Vol. 08, No. 4

Tin House: Spring Issue 2008: Off the Grid

Tin House Magazine: Summer Reading 2010: Vol. 11, No. 4