Praise for Gorgeous Lies
GORGEOUS LIES
NOMINATED FOR A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
| The New York Times
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Martha McPhee’s elegantly written first novel, ”Bright Angel Time” (1997), was a road story with a difference. The narrator, Kate Cooper, recounted her experiences at the age of 8, when her mother, Eve, newly abandoned by her husband, hooked up with an itinerant Gestalt therapist named Anton Furey. It was 1970, and Anton, a former Jesuit from Texas who was ”writing the definitive treatise on the psychology of love,” introduced Eve and her three daughters to ”a new life on the road with his kids, in a turquoise camper….”
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| Los Angeles Times Book Review | “[McPhee] avoids the extremes of hippie nostalgia and conservative revisionism and doesn’t provide simple answers. Her prose captures the Chardin mood: Elegant and airy, it seems to levitate even the grubbiest details.” |
| The Washington Post Bookworld | “The greatest strength of Gorgeous Lies is in its multiplicity of perspectives…It’s easy to see why the charismatic figures from BAT will not loosen their grip on this author. |
| Santa Fe New Mexican | “Some sentenceas bulge with lyric images while others are blunt with resentment, wielded like weapons. When McPhee strikes the right rhythem you don’t so much read her prose as live inside it.” |
| Times Union (Albany NY) | “McPhee bring sensitivity and insight to her account…She is an immensely gifted novelist.” |
| The Dallas Morning News | “Deftly depicts individuals dealing with old memories and new problems.” |
| O Magazine
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In Martha McPhee’s Gorgeous Lies (Harcourt), Anton Furey (of McPhee’s acclaimed first novel, Bright Angel Time) is the dying patriarch of a household that includes his own five children by his first wife, his second wife’s three children, and the daughter they have together. Now adults, the Furey-Cooper progeny adore the charismatic Anton, who has molded them into his idea of the perfect American family: intellectually adventurous, spiritually enlightened, emotionally secure….
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| O Magazine | “An unusually strong novel [that] explores the wild frontier of domestic life.” |
| Elle | “McPee is a sensuous stylist” |
| Kirkus Reviews(starred) | “Fine work: a moving portrait of a foolish, full-hearted but impossibly innocent man.” |
| The McPhee Sisters by Richard K. Rein
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How do you figure those remarkable McPhee sisters?
Martha McPhee was nominated this year for a National Book Award for her novel “Gorgeous Lies,” published by Harcourt and a sequel to “Bright Angel Time” (Random House). Jenny McPhee’s first novel, “The Center of Things,” has just come out in paperback (Ballantine). Another sister, Laura, is a photographer who collaborated with Jenny and Martha on “Girls: Ordinary Girls and Their Extraordinary Pursuits,” also published by Random House.
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| Larry McMurtry | “Gorgeous Lies is a lovely meditation on mortality…brilliantly and convincingly done.” |
| Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried | “I loved this book. A genuine work of art…And Martha McPhee plainly ranks as one of our country’s best young writers.” |
| Los Angeles Times Book Review | [McPhee] avoids the extremes of hippie nostalgia and conservative revisionism and doesn’t provide simple answers. Her prose captures the Chardin mood: Elegant and airy, it seems to levitate even the grubbiest details. |
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